I'm not a particularly spiritual person. OK, fine. I'm not actually spiritual at all. That said, I do try to be a good person. So the fact that a nun had an impact on how I view art is pretty ironic. Sister Wendy Beckett was one of the first art critics to whom I ever paid any attention. She hosted a series of documentaries, mostly about the fine arts in the early 90's on PBS. I love PBS by the way but that's another topic for another day.
She has no time for the snobbery that can come along with art critiques. She believes art can help make one's life meaningful and bring peace to one's life when they truly see it without pre-conceived ideas.
Sister Wendy came to the public eye in 1991, when she was featured in a short film about England’s National Gallery. With her gentle lisp and insightful lectures, she quickly gained a following among television viewers. The BBC quickly ordered several television series to feature the “art nun” as she traveled through Great Britain and much of the world, discussing important works of art. There were only eleven episodes but they had an impact on how I viewed art.
I would love to tell you that I spent hours of time studying art but I didn't. I spent more time making art than trying to understand it. The sister was like no other nun that I ever saw. She caught my attention immediately. She was Oxford-educated and had a great passion for art and it came through like a beacon of light when she talked about art. She did spend uncountable hours seeking out books and cards from museums.
Viewing art with an earnest heart seems so easy and so obvious when she explains how she looks at art through the eyes of innocence as a child would view it. When the series became available on DVD, I eagerly forked out the cash to have this in my collection, along with a great hard cover book about her time in the spotlight. Every time I watch her, I am inspired all over again with an energy to explore and learn that I can't really explain.
Sister Wendy became a nun at 16 and was in her sixties at the time of the series. That show made her, alongside Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Maria von Trapp, the most instantly recognizable nun in the world. There was even a West End musical, Postcards from God, based on her life. She has spent her entire life in service and has found that art is a vehicle to God.
Before that, the sister was a teaching nun in her native South Africa with the Notre Dame de Namur order, but had to give up after a series of epileptic seizures, brought on by stress.
She has been absent from our screens now for a good few years. I found it really interesting that when I read about her again years after the series ended. She never wanted to do it in the first place and had she known how much time it would take, she would have never done it at all.
Since that time, she has spent decades away from the world as a hermit and consecrated virgin, living in a caravan in a copse in the monastery garden of the enclosed Carmelite convent in the U.K. She spends most of her life completely silent, not even speaking to the other nuns.
Interview in 2007 where she discusses her experiences in front of the camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pJsyXM0uVI
I would love to tell you that I spent hours of time studying art but I didn't. I spent more time making art than trying to understand it. The sister was like no other nun that I ever saw. She caught my attention immediately. She was Oxford-educated and had a great passion for art and it came through like a beacon of light when she talked about art. She did spend uncountable hours seeking out books and cards from museums.
Viewing art with an earnest heart seems so easy and so obvious when she explains how she looks at art through the eyes of innocence as a child would view it. When the series became available on DVD, I eagerly forked out the cash to have this in my collection, along with a great hard cover book about her time in the spotlight. Every time I watch her, I am inspired all over again with an energy to explore and learn that I can't really explain.
"There is no life without work, anxieties or tensions. Peace is not found in avoiding these but in understanding them and controlling their force. "
Sister Wendy became a nun at 16 and was in her sixties at the time of the series. That show made her, alongside Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Maria von Trapp, the most instantly recognizable nun in the world. There was even a West End musical, Postcards from God, based on her life. She has spent her entire life in service and has found that art is a vehicle to God.
Before that, the sister was a teaching nun in her native South Africa with the Notre Dame de Namur order, but had to give up after a series of epileptic seizures, brought on by stress.
She has been absent from our screens now for a good few years. I found it really interesting that when I read about her again years after the series ended. She never wanted to do it in the first place and had she known how much time it would take, she would have never done it at all.
She never considered herself an adventurous person. She did not like to talk or speak to anybody all day apart from a few words. It makes her parallel life as a television icon all the more extraordinary. She had never even seen television when she hosted the series.
Since that time, she has spent decades away from the world as a hermit and consecrated virgin, living in a caravan in a copse in the monastery garden of the enclosed Carmelite convent in the U.K. She spends most of her life completely silent, not even speaking to the other nuns.
It feels like everyone has something to say these days based on what is popular or how it makes them look. Maybe we should all try to be more quiet and listen more than we speak. We need to look at art though the eyes of a child and live in the moment. I really wish she had a blog, don't you?
Sister Wendy publications: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/meet/books.html
By: Renee Bangerter
No comments:
Post a Comment