Geelong, Australia
An expert advisory body to Australia’s Catholic bishops has issued an invitation for artists to share their “artistic gifts” with parishes around the country as the church marks a “Jubilee of Artists” – part of this year’s global Catholic Jubilee – this weekend.
The “Invitation to Artists” was issued by the National Liturgical Architecture and Art Council – an expert advisory body to the Bishops Commission for Liturgy of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
In a statement, the council said the world “desperately…needs your contribution as artists to help us imagine a better world free of violence and war, exploitation and oppression, poverty and misery”.
A work by Canberra-based artist Sue Orchison depicting the Holy Spirit. PICTURE: Courtesy of Sue Orchison.
“We need your help to be able to move beyond the distraction of superficial appearances and cosmetic beauty, beyond cheap comments that wound and divide. Instead, inspired by the work of the Creator of the Universe, you offer us the possibility of entering more deeply into the meaning and purpose of all that exists.”
Noting that the “Church needs artists; the Church needs you”, the council acknowledged that “far too often in Australia, churches have had recourse to mass-produced images and liturgical vessels and vestments selected from a catalogue”.
“This is serious deficit because we are missing out on your artistic gifts and insights in the life of our worshipping communities. We encourage parishes and support them in taking every opportunity to receive good works of religious and sacred art so that, having left your studio, they may inspire us in the Christian life.”
In a statement, Bishop Ken Howell of Toowoomba, the bishops’ delegate to the council, said art “is at its best when it is prophetic and brings inspiration”.
“We should be harnessing the gifts and insights of our artists in our worshipping communities, to better lead people to praise and worship God.”
Canberra-based iconographer Sue Orchison has created works which now hang in cathedrals, churches and schools around the country, including an image of Mary MacKillop in the Cathedral of Saint Christopher in Canberra.
Orchison, who describes herself as a Latin-rite Roman Catholic, said she discovered iconography, more traditionally associated with the Orthodox Church, about 20 years ago.
While she had always enjoyed painting religious images such as the face of Jesus and Mary as a child, Orchison said it was years later while walking by a Catholic bookshop that she saw an advertisement for an iconography course.
“About a month later I joined it and loved it – it’s been such a blessing in my life….I haven’t stopped painting icons since.”
That included in 2018 when she spent about six months at an iconography course in Bethlehem.
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Orchison, who sees art as “one of the beauties of the Catholic Church”, said the Jubilee of Artists being marked this weekend was a time for her personally to be “reawakened into who I am as an artist and what I’m called to do”.
“Michelangelo – his works are magnificent and they inspire everyone who looks at them,” she said. “This is, in a little way, what [artists] in parishes churches can do. Everytime someone comes to parish, they are challenged or taken to a place of worship by some of these works of art around the walls of the churches.”
Orchison added that it was important for artists to realise the impact art can have on parishioners and to share about their mission “to paint the Word of God into the world”.
“It’s so important that we as lay people are involved in giving the message of the Gospel in our parishes.”
The Jubilee of Artists is being marked in Australia from 15th to 18th February.
