Informed by both personal and communal vision, an artist interprets the constantly evolving relationships that make up not just a single life, but also this vast web of life we dare and dance and dream through.
From “Transfiguration” (seen above) to “Tango” (seen below), the art of Hazel Bartram-Birchenough invites you to seek out and identify “Higher Forms of Life.” About “Transfiguration” she says “This phenomenon speaks to the witnessing of a great and unique revelation during one’s spiritual journey. We are shown beyond the cave of gloom and confusion, the prospect of a glorious light on our path.”
Currently showing at the Episcopal Diocese of Texas (EDOT) Gallery, Bartram-Birchenough’s art features both figurative and abstract works, reflecting a process she describes as “a way of reaching the source, the deepest, numinous parts of the psyche.”
The abstract form of “Close Communion” (seen above, left), and the more classical “The Great Cedars, Self-Portrait from a Dream” (seen above, right), cause us to slow down and consider our own lives cast in the light of Spirit. “Close Communion,” she says “describes a deep sharing of the golden bread and fish caught by Christ, the fisher of men. The harmony of forms expresses the potential for love and understanding that is available through grace to all of us.”
Grace and harmony wind their way around and through her work. About the sculpture “Melissa being Mary” (seen above) Bartram-Birchenough writes: “Melissa is a young actress, who projects a serene, compassionate feeling that reminds one of the presence of Mary, the mother of Christ.”
EDOT (Episcopal Diocese of Texas) Gallery at the Houston Diocesan Center will show “Higher Forms of Life” through May 14, 2010. Houston-based painter Marilyn Biles is curator of artworks at the EDOT Gallery. About art shown at the gallery, she says “Some will have a sense of tradition and mystery, some of intellectual depth, some of visual piety, and some the unknowability of God.” Read more HERE and HERE.
Seen above, all images as named by Hazel Bartram-Birchenough. On the front-page mastheads are detail from “At His Feet” (main) “referring to intimate fragments of Christ’s life, as his feet are washed and at his deposition.” The mastheads at Daily Episcopalian and Speaking to the Soul show details from “Spiritual Journey … the visual treatment of the psychological gold, representing the Self.”