Dear Friends
Pointillism drove me dotty! I am always learning and recently was privileged
to see original works by Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet. I knew
Monet was a famous painter but didn’t really appreciate why. He was part of a
movement of painters that sought to paint using small blobs of thickly applied
paint to build up an ‘impression’ of what the artist was looking at. The
pointillists took this a stage further using brightly coloured dots to build up a
picture. I was looking at a painting by Paul Signac and when you got up close
all you could see was some brightly coloured dots! They look like random
blobs of paint. Only on standing back can you see the picture with the eye
making the connections.
As we travel into the new Methodist year, it may feel at times we are looking
at blobs and going a bit dotty! A lot of change is underway and sometimes we
can only see small parts of it and can seem to be a bit random. At such times it
is good to remember the bigger picture of who we are (followers of Jesus
Christ) seeking to live out our lives as disciples (with a Methodist perspective).
At times the painting can get messy – especially when it is incomplete, but
God is at work, painting the church anew and we are part of that.
The impressionists were not received well by the conventional art community
in France (perhaps a bit like the early Methodists were not received well with
the established religious communities). Change can be difficult, but the
impressionists left a lasting legacy which is stunning. Then, as I moved on, I
encountered the post impressionists such as Toulouse–Lautrec. He stuck
together random bits of cardboard on which he painted. I was amazed, and
again reminded of how creative beauty is brought forth from a random mess of
life. Change comes and we go on together trusting in our faithful God and
remembering we encounter Christ in the unlikely, the random & the neglected.
With love,
Nick