CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Artworks embody the hope of Christian faith
You see immediately on entering what was Bishop Eden’s personal chapel at Eden Court Theatre a life-size figure, carved from limewood, a confident young girl securely perched on her father’s shoulders.
Last week I spent an hour absorbing artist Liondsaidh Chaimbeul’s exhibition Fo Bhlàth (‘In Blossom’).
The ‘Parent and Child’ sculpture (‘Pàrant’s Pàiste’) radiates peace throughout the space, filling me with hope and wholeness.
I was also moved by ‘Seòbhrach às a’ Chlaich’ (‘Primrose from the Stone’). It’s inspired by words from poet Donald MacAulay who, reflecting on loss and desolation thought it “not impossible that, sparked by a propagating sun, the stones might bring forth blossom.”
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Liondsaidh’s sculpture symbolises primrose petals emerging from a circle of rocks.
There is hope! “I think life is precious and just worth living,” Liondsaidh tells me.
The poems by her husband Angus Peter which we see on a video loop are both written in Gaelic script and illustrated with line drawings by Liondsaidh.
They acknowledge sadness but are alert to an eclipsing joy.
Not being a Gaelic reader, I need the English translation, and for the first time am a little jealous, not having been raised to the sweet language of the Gaels!
I loved a small, colourful piece – ‘Ciorstaidh’: a girl with a bunch of enormous flowers. One glance; such an explosion of joy.
I loved the letters of the Gaelic alphabet on 18 pieces of Ballachulish slate with the word ‘gradh’ (‘love’) highlighted. I loved the pile of children’s bricks spelling out ‘Dia leat’ (‘God with you’.)
The source of the hope which both Liondsaidh and Angus Peter share is their Christian faith.
In her art, as in her life, Liondsaidh tells me, “Christ comes first and foremost.”
She is a maker, because God is the Maker. She sees the whole universe as sacramental – a living expression of divine reality.
Liondsaidh came to faith as a young artist in the 1990s. It was a whole new way of seeing – or perhaps it awakened her to understand the way she had always seen.
She was free now to be in the world and see the world as God’s child, free to use her perceptions and skills to create the work which was uniquely hers to do.
It seemed to me that Liondsaidh’s exhibition recreates the essence of what a chapel is – a portal, a gateway to encounter.
Here you can catch stray syllables of a sweet language you have still to learn. Here you can sense, awakening your heart, the propagating warmth of a greater sun. Dia leat.
And would it be going too far to see that alluring limewood figure as symbolising our great Parent? And ourselves, as children secure on broad shoulders?
