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Allegories of HeavenAn artist explores the greatest story ever toldALLEGORIES OF HEAVEN: Dinah Roe Kendall, who lives in Sheffield, studied at London's Slade School of Art from 1948 to 1952. Lucien Freud wanted her to sit for him, Stanley Spencer's daughter Unity was a fellow-student. It was an exciting time in the British art scene. Dinah looked at and learned from such artists as Jacob Epstein, Spencer and many more. Now 78, Grandma Moses she is not. The nostalgic world of primitive painting is far removed from her vibrant biblical scenes, placed in modern contexts and painted in modern materials. The influence of her teachers is to be seen in her work, but she has moved on from them, developing over the years a style that is distinctly her own. They are works drenched in colour, reflecting five years of living in Cyprus and also the influence of modern artists she has admired and learned from, such as Peter Howson and Ana Maria Pacheco. She usually paints in acrylic on board or canvas, mixing the paint with thickening media. Even the very fine print quality of the book cannot show the physical impact of the paintings. Her angels wear robes built up of thick knife and brush strokes flecked with gold. She paints the cross as a visual sermon: no mere philosophical concept, but a hunk of wood along which, as Francis Schaeffer used to remark, one could have run a finger and got a splinter. FigurativeShe has always remained a figurative painter, despite changing fashions and much pressure to explore abstract art. Her biblical scenes are cast in modern contexts: Jesus visits a Sheffield school, Lazarus is resurrected from an alcove in a wall borrowed from Chatsworth House, Jairus's daughter awakes in a modern home, surrounded by modern neighbours. An abandoned teddy-bear watches the scene in total amazement - 'Well, he would, wouldn't he?' At the opening of an all-too-short exhibition of the paintings at Winchester Cathedral, Dinah Roe Kendall told me that she wants to show that meeting Jesus is an unsettling and life-changing experience that could happen at any point in time. The paintings constantly engage the viewer. The infant Jesus presented in the temple is looking right at you, Jesus's finger writing in the dust in 'Woman taken in Adultery' points out of the canvas and at the viewer. Yet there's intimacy too: in 'Supper at Emmaus', Jesus sits at the head of a table, with two disciples whose hands reach out towards his. He is holding a loaf of bread; wine and glasses stand ready. His pose recalls Stanley Spencer's 1939 picture of a lonely Jesus in the Wilderness, cradling in his hands a scorpion. No painting of Kendall's shows more than this how far she has travelled from Spencer's troubled vision. Social commentThere is social comment - the Good Samaritan is a black man, a useful reminder. And there is a lot of humour. 'The Marriage at Cana in Galilee' is a witty footnote to a famous painting by Breughel, and 'Jesus visits Bethany' is a delightful study of Jesus off-duty (though as ever, the crowds are pressing in at the door). But humour never replaces depth. In the Bethany interior, Lazarus sits apart from the others in a curtained alcove as if the shadow of the tomb has not quite left him. His eyes are fixed not upon Jesus but upon some faraway place, as if contemplating a landscape that only he has seen. And at the extreme edge of the feast in Cana, a vulnerable lamb is hesitating at the gate. It's no criticism of Eugene Peterson's biblical rendering, 'The Message', that it seems rather secondary to Dinah Roe Kendall's powerful narratives - his text is always fresh and provocative and sometimes astonishingly apt. The artist provides some interesting comments on the paintings themselves. Only co-publication with IVP USA has enabled Piquant to offer this book at such a low price. Seasoned collectors of art books will think themselves fortunate. More importantly, many people who cannot normally afford books of paintings will be able to afford this one. I cannot imagine them ever regretting the modest investment involved. David Porter© Evangelicals Now - June 2002 |