The Community Montage
At first glance the idea of taking 16 disparate people aged between seven and 80, with varying degrees of artistic prowess, and have them come up with a single painting could be seen as a recipe for disaster. In the case of a new montage painting of Holy Trinity, conceived by HT member Kim Fewell, the result, in water-soluble oil paints, is actually a spectacular addition to the HT Centenary exhibition.
Here Kim talks about the process, the outcome and how she sees using art as therapy.
I run classes for people who are stressed, and depressed and out of work, and I have seen how being creative helps people to relax, enjoy life, enjoy the process and draw people together. It helps people to open up and become supportive of each other.
I thought if we could do something like this within the church, it would help me get to know people, it would help them to get to know each other; it would also allow some of the very busy people in the church to have something to allow them to process things.
The result has far exceeded my expectations, given that I didn’t know how many people would volunteer. It was literally just put it out in an email and people could reply to me. I wondered: what if I get 20 or what if I only get 12? How am I going to deal with this? So I just had to leave it to God.
I asked last year to be sent photographs of the church as I thought someone must have a really good one, but what came in, I felt, would not lend itself to an interesting montage, good as many of the photos were. So I decided that I would just go out and take photos and I ended up taking over 250! Eventually there was just one day I decided: I am just going to go down now, because I was getting a bit stressed by this point. When I got down to church, the sun was going down and the church just glowed. When I got home I just knew that was the one. It feels like it was a one-off, but it wasn’t. I had to take all of the other ones to rule them out, to say: that is not the view but this is.”
Art as therapy
I used to be a GP and treated depression with medication, listening and talking and for myself I stopped general practice because I was burned out.
I had always loved art but never had time to do it, so when I stopped work I started doing art classes myself. I realised that, during the process of drawing and painting and shutting out the rest of the world, something happened inside. I found, during the process of drawing, that all of that sadness, all that introspection, all of that “what am I going to do with my life?” just disappeared. I just got lost in the process of the art, and while I was doing it I was fine. Then I started to feel that, as the class came to an end, I felt oh, now I have got to go back into the world.
But after each session, I came out of it a little bit higher up, a little bit better off, and I realised that I was still there, that there was still a person inside who had a life to live, a mission to fulfil and I just wanted to share that with other people. I have done that on little projects that God has led me into. He has developed this whole thing. I never envisaged what I am doing would happen. It is just like God gave me a little shove here. a shove there and it just kind of happened.
I don’t teach, I am just a catalyst. I give people the things they need to do the work and say: off you go, it doesn’t matter how it turns out, just have a go. Very often when people are really stressed they say: “I can’t paint today Kim”, so I give then a palette knife and some paint and I say: just play with the paint and often at the end of it they say: “I really love this painting.” It is often because, rather than trying to make a painting they were just relaxing.
There are just so many ways in which art is a therapy, and it is spiritual too. God is a creator God and when we are being creative we get much closer to Him and He can speak to us. We come away with a much greater appreciation of His creation and, as we try, ourselves, to copy it, we go back outside and think: WOW that is amazing!
The Community Montage is part of Holy Trinity’s Centenary Exhibition, which runs until September, and is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10am-1pm and Sundays from 1pm-3pm. There is a pop-up café and also activities for children.
by Ian Farrimond and Kim Fewell