Within my practice, I am increasingly aware of an experience of mutuality that exists within the practice of making, seeing and being with art. Art is so much more than a resource to be mastered or manipulated in the communication of an idea. In fact the important thing is not what I can do with art, but what art can do with me. When I am open and alive to these possibilities, art becomes a path on which to travel and place where I can be.
Sinking like a stone in the studio, 2021
An update on the exhibition, Sinking like a stone, Whitley College, 20 So, the timing is strange…but believe it or not, the day before I was scheduled to hang this exhibition, Sinking like a stone,...
Draw near with faith, and… is a recent work that is now part of Volume 16 of the Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project and explores the ideas of what it means to draw near with faith,...
Being among trees – an exhibition of recent work, 2023
When words fail me, being in the studio helps in making sense of the world. This new body of work emerges from several years of attending more deeply to the life of the trees that...
Re-membering the experience of being in worship, 2021
Sinking Like a Stone: An Exhibition Completed through the experience of worshipping in isolation in 2020-21 this new exhibition is explores how our collective experience of worship has been altered and shaped by our disembodied...
Completed through the experience of worshipping in isolation in 2020-21 this new exhibition is explores how our collective experience of worship has been altered and shaped by our disembodied times. It is therefore frustratingly fitting that the timing of this exhibition, scheduled to open in August, is somewhat uncertain as we find ourselves physically separated from one another…again! As we begin to gather again in different ways, the artworks themselves – and the stories they invite – will offer a gentle invitation to re-member the experience of being in worship alongside other people in a time that necessitates the physical separation of our bodies. I look forward to hanging this work @ Whitley College and exploring the ideas and conversations that will surely emerge.
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/nest/watch-artist-mean/ What are we claiming when we say, ‘I am an artist’, and why is it that some people are able claim this sense of...
Few contemporary artists have sparked our imaginations like Christo and Jean-Claude. Now both are gone. I look forward to a series of retrospective exhibitions and...
Figure 1. Ava Byrne, (2020). NGV. Gouache on canvas. Figure 2. Ethan Byrne, (2020). NGV. Gouache on canvas. In this time of isolation, I have 2 paintings...
One of the significant benefits of belonging to a faith community is knowing that we have a place in the larger human story that also connects us with the Divine calling toward healing and wholeness. Finding a community where we belong can be a powerful remedy for the experience of isolation and separation that are inherent in the human condition, but when our shared belief systems equate healing with cure, the desire for healing and wholeness can paradoxically leave people living with incurable illness or disability feeling isolated in a faith community.
In the Christian tradition it is easy to read the call to pray for healing in the gospels as an invitation to pray for the restoration of physical health. Whilst a desire for physical health is normal, it is an equally normal human experience to live with illness. Hans-Georg Gadamer proposes the art of healing involves knowing and doing what we can to ensure that we participate in behaviours and treatments that seek to restore health to the whole person, body and soul. Healing is therefore a process of persistently responding to the needs of the body and maintaining the integrity of the whole person. Understanding healing as a fluctuating process rather than a fixed outcome, leads to an appreciation of the unique qualities of every human body. We learn to see illness and disability as part of the normal spectrum of human experience.
When we pray for healing we are anticipating that something may change as a result of our prayer (Matthew 17:20). As a person living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), I have asked for healing prayer and been deeply blessed in the experience. My original request for healing prayer was deeply embedded in a strong desire for cure. When it was evident that I was still unwell, I wondered what this said about the faith we had expressed in prayer. I worried that people might interpret the presence of illness as a lack of faith. Having travelled with this illness and the healing power of prayer for the past 10 years I am fortunate to be able to say that the chaos and disruption that are part of living with MS have become for me a reminder that the body is a site for continuity and change. This crisis in my body has been an invitation to become more aware of the needs of my soul.
Theologian Paul Fiddes suggests that we experience movements of divine life coming, turning, flowing, and burning in the body itself. To pray for healing in the spirit of participation, repetitively and with anticipation, even in the absence of a cure can lead to an awareness of divine life in the body that is turning, flowing and even burning with neuropathic pain. The repetition of the prayer is a mode of perception that turns my attention toward the life of God that is inherent in my embodied experience in the world. In this way, it is possible to say that if we have faith we will be healed even if we are not cured, because it is in faith that we participate in the life of God and God’s life participates in the body.
Art making has been an important part of my healing process. Ellen Dissanayake claims that making art offers the opportunity to engage with the art of repetition to elaborate on our experience of desire, instilling a sense of belonging, meaning and competence in ourselves and in other people. Art can also redirect our focus away from ourselves, enabling us to pay attention to the movement of God. Art can therefore function to engage our bodies, enabling us to be aware of ourselves and attend to our bodily presence whilst refocusing our attention toward God in whom we ultimately belong. In this way making art can be considered a prayerful movement toward healing that leads us to the acceptance of what it means to live in a human body, fully engaged and participating in the life of God, in sickness and in health.
When the experience of disability was new for me, finding ways to continue working as an artist were important. Hope on the Horizon I, is an oil painting that is largely bound with plaster bandages. The thin line of transparent green oil paint that is the horizon emerges from beneath the bandages, as a reminder to carefully respect the unseen process of healing that is at work in the presence of serious illness.
Hope on the Horizon I, 2011.
Art Therapist Shaun McNiff says that, “Art heals by accepting the pain and doing something with it.” When Jesus approached the blind man Bartimaeus he did not presume to know what the man needed but asked him “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:42-52). The question was an open invitation for Bartimaeus to participate with the healing process by recognising and naming his deepest need. Healing was not something that was done to Bartimaeus. I would venture to suggest that it was not even something that was done for him. Rather it was something that Jesus did with the full participation of Bartimaeus who wanted his sight restored and expressed his desire directly with Jesus.
So, what is it that you want? In naming what we really want we are open to the fullness of our humanity and we are vulnerable because we are not sure what will happen next. It is important to not presume to know what a person living with illness and disability might want. To live in ways that are healing, we must encounter the whole contingent experience of living with, in and through our uniquely able and differently abled bodies. We don’t all need to be cured of disability – but we do all need to live in ways that are healing, as we navigate the human condition.
In 2019, through the season of Lent, I worked with Rosemary Burdett to lead the congregation at St Stephen’s Anglican church in Warrandyte, in the creation of a painting which embodied moments of prayerful …
Have you thought about making art, but don’t know how to get started? This article, written by Sez Wilks, was recently published in the La Trobe University Alumni magazine. Hands-on hobbies can help us during …
Last year I was privileged to work with the Centre for Music, Litury and the Arts to explore the idea of painting my contribution to a conversation about the lived experience of incarnational worship. Over …
Watch: ‘What does it mean to be an artist?’ What are we claiming when we say, ‘I am an artist’, and why is it that some people are able claim this sense of identity whilst …
Few contemporary artists have sparked our imaginations like Christo and Jean-Claude. Now both are gone. I look forward to a series of retrospective exhibitions and moving image dedications. Art for everyone….. Patricia Fenner (Assoc Prof, …
Figure 1. Ava Byrne, (2020). NGV. Gouache on canvas. Figure 2. Ethan Byrne, (2020). NGV. Gouache on canvas. In this time of isolation, I have 2 paintings hanging on the wall in my home office that evoke …
There are tensions on the surface of this image that have resulted in a furious working toward solutions with whatever materials are at hand. Having attempted to cover the content of this ambiguous and organic …
Art making has been an important part of my healing process. Ellen Dissanayake claims that making art offers the opportunity to engage with the art of repetition to elaborate on our experience of desire, instilling …
JOY Joy arrives in the space between what has passed and what is still to come. We can never plan to experience joy but we can live in such a way as to be …
Art helps us to navigate particular challenges in human existence, giving shape and form to our ephemeral and yet lived experiences. Mikel Dufrenne (1973) submits that the work of art is grasped in the aesthetic experience. …
This project explores what can be learned about the possibilities for joy when the private practice of drawing is located in public experience of Sunday worship. A case study identifies distinct phases of making, being with and seeing art, all integral to the process of aesthetic theological inquiry, as mechanisms for drawing in both artist and viewer to participate in creative conversation. In the immanence of honesty, the experience of
making and seeing art in church offers an experience of joy characterised by an embodied experience of ‘emotional attunement between the self and the world’ (Volf 2015). Whilst the experience of drawing in-church extends our capacity to see God at work when it happens, the emerging work of art is drawing-in (the) church, inviting us to participate in a process of honest reflection that transforms the way we understand what it
means to belong in a life of faith.
