Suspended above the West door Compendium (tree) both complements and disrupts the intimacy of the 18th-century interior with its austere, spatially symmetrical wooden box pews and skeletal rood loft. The tapestry was created on an 18th-century loom, which belies its contemporary intensity in colour and geometry. It subject is informed by Paul Klee’s The Nature of Nature, the system used by Klee to form a basic geometrical model of drawing a tree. From this Klee generated diagrammatic branches as a sequence of tapering lines, fusing ideas of structure and growth.

Mae Compendium (tree), wedi’i atal uwchben drws gorllewinol, yn cyd-fynd â chydweithrediad ac yn torri’r cyffyrddiad gyda’i mewnolrwydd 18fed ganrif, gyda’i bresenoldeb caeth, symmetrig yn y bocs a’i loft rood esgyrnog. Mae’r tapestri wedi’i greu ar droell o’r 18fed ganrif, sy’n cuddio ei gyfoesrwydd yn y lliw a’r geometrïaeth. Mae ei bwnc wedi’i ysbrydoli gan The Nature of Nature gan Paul Klee, y system a ddefnyddiodd Klee i ffurfio model geometrig sylfaenol o ddarlun coeden. O hyn, mae Klee wedi creu canghennau diagramatig fel cyfres o linellau taprog, gan uno syniadau strwythur a chynnydd.

Andrew Bick received an MA in painting from the Chelsea School of Art and has since shown extensively in Europe and the U.S. Bick's works are executed from a combination of oil paint, marker pen, wax, acrylic paint and Perspex. The works play with elements of flat colour, depth and surface, revealing the process of painting as a series of strategies or components within the visual puzzle of the whole. Bick's paintings call into question false opposites, and contrast hard geometric or blunt graphic forms with uncertain or dashed-out strokes or patches of scrubbed brushwork. Within the abstract geometry of his works, he combines matte and glossy surfaces, different textures, colour and ‘non-colour’. His work has been described as ‘gently disruptive and purposefully chaotic’.

halesgallery.com/artists/9-andrew-bick/overview/

Photos by Mud and Thunder

* NB St David’s is situated very close to and just east of the A449. Some satnavs may direct you onto the A449 southbound but this is incorrect. Access is from the B4235 and the turn off at Maerdy.

RESOURCE FOR MEDITATION

For you shall go out in joy,
   and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
   shall burst into song,
   and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
   instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
   for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 55.12-13

 In every mighty oak there remain the rings that once comprised a sapling. Every year a tree grows a little, forming another ring. The story of a lifetime is left behind in these rings; how old the tree is, years of drought or frost, years of bountiful growth.

There are similar markers in our souls – silent measurements of the experiences we’ve been through. Scars and memories of harsh adversity might be there, as well as signs of joy and blessings.

• Imagine yourself like a tree with roots planted deep in the earth and branches outstretched to the heavens – breathe deeply for a few minutes.

• Picture the patterns made by the years of your life like the patterns made by tree rings: the years of drought, the years of abundant growth, the knots of pain, the brittle bark, the first growth.

• Give thanks for the beauty of all the years of your life. 

Written by Julia Porter Pryce for Art and Christianity