J. Gordon Anderson - Contemporary Art

Recently I have been rereading a book we read way back in college called The Christian Mind , by Harry Blamires. Blamires was a student under C.S. Lewis at Oxford. Lately I find myself reading more books that would appeal to the minds of searching college students, but that's another story. Every Anglican, and for that matter Christian, should read this book. It is an ideal gift for a thinking college student. Written in 1963, and first published by S.P.C.K., this book is one of the best kept secrets in Anglicanism. It was, I understand, one of the Episcopal Book Club selections way back when. Obviously not enough people who became leaders in the Episcopal Church and the CofE read it. The book says that the Church has by and large surrendered to secularism. It makes the argument that there is a secular way of thinking and a Christian way of thinking. He says that it is possible to think secularly about Christian things and secular things (which is what most people do), and that it ...

Here is the other icon I did for Christmas. It is Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Sorry for the bad photograph... I swear it is the camera and not me. I am currently working on, you guessed it, another crucifixion. But this one is in a more western style. One of my goals for this new year is to read more works of fiction. Reading works on theology and philosophy all the time is fun, but variety is the spice of life. Reading good works of fiction, like listening to good music and playing music, and appreciating fine art, helps make one truly well-rounded and intellectually open. So I am currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is really good. His writing style, at least in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is sort of like Hemingway - short, succinct sentences, but packed with meaning. It takes place in this post-apocalyptic world (just read the description I linked to on wikipedia). I mention this novel because it makes me think of the paintings of the Norwegian artist Odd Ner...

I don't know if I had too many mimosa's to drink this New Year's Day, or what, but I just caught Thomas Kinkade, the kitschy "painter of light" on TBN where he was giving an interview about his art, and it kind of blew me away. For years I have had an intense loathing of this man and his work, but now I feel like I understand it it a bit better. Before I go any further, though, I have to confess that once in a while I do watch TBN just to see what's on. As it happened, I was watching the papal mass at St. Peter's and got bored with it for a minute, so I checked TBN (ahhh, isn't postmodern American TV amazing?), that's when I saw Kinkade, whom the interviewer kept referring to as a "young man" (he's not young), sitting there in a beret of all things, waxing eloquent about art. The amazing thing was that he was quite articulate, and had a very definite philosophy about his art. When asked about the relevance of painting today he spoke...