Throughout the pandemic, especially during Lockdown, it was recognised that the isolation could cause loneliness. So there were many suggestions for ways to maintain our mental health. These ranged from sports and exercise, through quiz nights online, to arts and crafts. And this concern has continued as the crisis looks set to continue into the winter.
Grayson Perry, the ceramicist, for example, did a TV programme, in which he recruited his celebrity friends, to do something artistic, as a way to encourage viewers to emulate them. When he encountered some who were anxious about getting it ‘right’, he said something that is remarkably freeing: “Your mistakes are your style.”
My wife was challenged to take up crochet, by our youth worker at church, Rochelle. And I tried lino cutting, which I hadn’t done since primary school! I then posted them to some of my friends around the country, who I hadn’t seen for a while. I felt justified, when I read an article by Grayson Perry in The Standard, where he advocated this as something many famous artists had done.
You can see three of my products below. They may not be
‘good art’, but they are at least ‘art’ of a kind!
Over the summer, I belatedly read a book by a former colleague of mine, Adrienne Chaplin, who is a philosopher of aesthetics, called: Art and Soul. Signposts for Christians in the Arts. This is an excellent account of the theological and philosophical considerations, which Christians need to think through, if they are to integrate their art with their faith.
Adrienne is influenced by Dutch Reformational thought; exemplified in the arts by Hans Rookmaaker and Calvin Seerveld, who promoted Abraham Kuyper’s ideas. He proclaimed that the Lordship of Christ extended to all areas of culture, including politics, economics, as well as the arts. It’s an emphasis often lost within individualistic Evangelicalism.
This may prove useful, in our outreach among Christian art students, at the University of the Arts and the Courtauld Institute; as well as our partnership with a YWAM team specialising in the arts. Amongst Millennials, the influence of the arts is great, and Allan has written some observations about how to connect missionally through contemporary culture, especially in his case, music.
Covid itself has been creative (if we can avoid attributing consciousness to a virus), constantly adopting fresh ways of affecting/infecting us. Churches too have been creative in their response; the most unlikely, elderly and techno-phobic congregations, have undergone a crash course in computing, and become adept with FaceBook, Instagram, YouTube, and Zoom.
This all reflects the creativity of God himself. Not just in the initial Act of Creation, but in an ongoing sense, he is always doing a New Thing (Isa. 43.19). Isaiah said this in the context of exile and the promise of return. Can we believe that God’s essential originality is still at work in our present-day crisis (Jn. 5.17), and drawing out of the apparent confusion the outlines of a new era?
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