John O’ Donohue was a modern-day mystic, philosopher, theologian and poet. He spent his life along the West Coast of Ireland where the solitude and beauty of the land shaped him as an artist and thinker.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest and English poet born July 28,1844. He is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era although during his lifetime, his poetry was never published. His approach to poetry was deeply enmeshed with his intimate and mystical spirituality. For Hopkins, who was an avid lover of nature, poetry was a means of accessing the Divine and of discovering God within nature.
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Lilias Trotter was a British artist, writer and visionary. It has been said that through Lilias’s contact with art critic and social philosopher, John Ruskin, she had the opportunity to become one of England’s greatest and most famous artists of her day. Yet, for her own convictions, Lilias turned away from this opportunity and followed a path that assured her of obscurity and promised no certain success.
Lilias lived forty years of her life among the Arabic people of North Africa and built significant friendships with Sufi mystics of the Sahara desert.
Resources:
Many Beautiful Things Documentary
A Passion For The Impossible Biography
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This artist profile episode is about the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral and how writer Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired a generation to restore this historical landmark.
The human heart longs for restoration and it is the artist who embodies this longing through artistic works and creative acts. We long to preserve and sustain beauty because in beauty’s longevity is tied our own hope that there is something more enduring than the ephemeral passing of our own bodies and physical structures. Places of beauty and historical landmarks become symbols of a deeper human impulse and reveal our longing for the eternal.
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Jonathan Pageau is a professional artist, writer and public speaker. He delivers several lectures every year in Universities, conferences and other venues around North America. He speaks on art, but mostly on the symbolic structures that underlie our experience of the world.
Through his YouTube channel and podcast, The Symbolic World, he also furthers the conversation on symbolism, meaning and patterns in everything from movies, to icons, to social trends.
As an artist, Jonathan is one of the only professional icon carvers in North America, taking on institutional and personal art commissions from all over the world. You can view his works in his carving website.
Jonathan is the editor and a contributor for the Orthodox Arts Journal which looks at the revival and significance of liturgical art today. He also gives weeklong carving classes with Hexaemeron School of Liturgical Arts , which are credited by Pontifex University.
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Josh Riebock is the best-selling author of the memoir, Heroes and Monsters and My Generation. He is host of the popular podcast, The Marrow, and a sought-after storyteller and poet at venues around the country for his captivating artistry and honesty.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Josh about cultivating honesty within artistry and how beauty and terror sometimes appear inextricably linked.
Tom Waits, Nirvana, Charles Bukowski, William Shakespeare, Stranger Things and the love and violence within scripture are among the topics of their discussion.
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In everything from our worship, to the art we make to the way we live our lives amidst a secularized culture, beauty is the often overlooked, yet powerful component of sharing the reality of the gospel.
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The loss of beauty as a principal value has been disastrous for Western culture and especially for the church. In this episode, author Brian Zahnd discusses the importance of returning to a Christian aesthetic and presenting the gospel as a beautiful alternative to the commercialism of society.
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Art is an extension of the artist. The environments we create affect our relationship to the world around us. From the beginning of the Genesis story on, humanity has been invited to collaborate with the Spirit of God in establishing environments of beauty and justice on the earth. In this keynote, Stephen discusses how these elements share an important interactive relationship and how as artists, we can assist in establishing beauty and justice in our lives. You can see the film documentary "For The Love Of" mentioned at the beginning of this episode here.
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"Strange as it may seem, beauty still needs to be defended. In the history of the West, beauty has played the role of Cinderella to her sisters, goodness and truth." In this talk, author Gregory Wolfe dignifies the role of beauty as an agent for expressing truth.
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