LENT TERM 2023
British Visionary Artists
Monday 6 February
Christopher Wood: Talent and Conflict (This lecture has been re-arranged from last term)
FRANCES SPALDING CBE, FRSL
In the chair Hilary Davies
Venue The Royal Asiatic Society
Doors open 6.15pm for a 6.45pm start; Concludes 8.30pm
Christopher Wood’s early death in 1930 went down in history as one of the major artistic losses of the interwar years. When the first major retrospective was mounted by the Redfern Gallery in 1938 some 50,000 people attended the exhibition, a larger audience than Picasso’s Guernica received this same year. This talk will touch on some of the ambiguities that remain within the received view of Wood’s life and work. His own voice will be heard through quotations from his letters. It will also look at the various moves within his oeuvre toward the affirmative richness of his late work, both in terms of painterliness and subject matter.
FRANCES SPALDING read art history at the University of Nottingham. Between 2000 and 2015, she taught at Newcastle University, becoming Professor of Art History. She acted as Editor of The Burlington Magazine, 2015-16, and is now Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2005 she was made a CBE for Services to Literature. She has written lives of the artists Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and John and Myfanwy Piper, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith; her other books include British Art Since 1900 (Thames & Hudson World of Art Series, 1987) and The Real and the Romantic: English Art between Two World Wars (Thames & Hudson, 2022).
Admission
CASH ONLY ON THE DOOR PLEASE
£8 or £5 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions
Full-time students with student ID card FREE
Wednesday 22 February 2023
Reynolds Stone: Engraver, Letterer, and Painter
HUMPHREY STONE
In the chair Professor Grevel Lindop
Venue The Royal Asiatic Society
Doors open 6.15pm for a 6.45pm start
Concludes 8.30pm
Reynolds Stone was one of the most distinguished wood engravers of the mid-20th century, and in his lettering in that medium unequalled. He was also an engraver, letterer, and painter. His work ranges from book plates – he produced over 350 – postage stamps, coats of arms, book illustrations, to the memorials to Britten, Eliot, and Churchill in Westminster Abbey. He was also a gifted watercolourist. In his work he achieved a timeless quality which is never fashionable, nor out of fashion.
This illustrated talk will trace Reynolds Stone’s life from his childhood to his home in Dorset, the Old Rectory, where the wild garden became his inspiration and the house a place for his friends to stay. With his wife Janet they created a unique atmosphere: a sense of having visited a place, in the words of Kathleen Raine, ‘eternally beautiful and immune from time’.
HUMPHREY STONE is a freelance typographic designer. He trained at Oxford University Press. He is the author of a magnificent book about his father, Reynolds Stone – A Memoir (The Dovecote Press, 2019).
Admission
CASH ONLY ON THE DOOR PLEASE
£8 or £5 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions
Full-time students with student ID card FREE
Monday 27 February 2023
Art of Mandala:
Philosophy and practice from a practitioner’s perspective
DANIEL DOCHERTY
In the chair Dr Jeremy Naydler
Venue The Royal Asiatic Society
Doors open 6.15pm for a 6.45pm start; Concludes 8.30pm
Mandalas, in essence, can be understood to be diagrams, patterns and pictures that are distillations of cosmic wisdom and harmony, repositories of archetypal intelligence. Mandalas offer a potentially powerful means of deepening one’s spiritual and contemplative practice. This is especially true when they are constructed – using the traditional tools of compass and straightedge – in a considered and contemplative manner. In this illustrated talk we will draw inspiration from several significant mandalas from around the world. We will also consider and elucidate key symbolic moments in the process of mandala creation.
DANIEL DOCHERTY is a gardener of both soul and soil. He is a co-founder and programme director at Sacred Art of Geometry Studios (SAOG Studios), Emerson College, and a visiting tutor at The Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Art. His deep love for the Sacred Art of Geometry has to do with the profound insights that the practice offers concerning our conscious participation within the Order of Nature and Cosmos. Daniel lives with his family in the heart of the beautiful Ashdown Forest where he sings to trees, forages wild mushrooms, and tends an abundant vegetable and flower garden.
Admission
CASH ONLY ON THE DOOR PLEASE
£8 or £5 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions
Full-time students with student ID card FREE
Monday 13 March 2023
Craft Practice as an Expression of the Perennial Philosophy
DR DAVID CRANSWICK
In the chair Emma Clark
Venue The Royal Asiatic Society
Doors open 6.15pm for a 6.45pm start; Concludes 8.30pm
Traditional craft training is essentially an esoteric training, which can be said to function on three levels: the outer aspect of ‘making’, the inner aspect of purification, and what in Tibetan Buddhist training is referred to as the ‘secret’ aspect. Ultimately everything in a craft tradition is an expression of spiritual training; there is nothing outside of this, even stirring one’s tea, in craft tradition, is a teaching and, as such, an embodiment of the mystery of ‘being’.
This talk will be an enquiry into the significance of traditional craft training, its relevance in today’s world, and how, if practiced correctly, it is a pure expression of the perennial philosophy.
DAVID CRANSWICK is an artist and a teacher of traditional painting materials and techniques. He has a doctorate in Fine Art from The Royal Academy of Art and he served a four-year apprenticeship with the artist Cecil Collins. He teaches at The Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts and is artist-in-residence at Cowdray House.
Admission
CASH ONLY ON THE DOOR PLEASE
£8 or £5 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions
Full-time students with student ID card FREE
Saturday 18 March 2023
The Cosmos in Stone: ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven’
TOM BREE
Venue The Art Workers’ Guild
Doors open 3.45pm for a 4.15pm start; Concludes 7pm
Numbers, and their various relationships, are eternal and unchanging in their truthfulness. As the ‘Incarnation’ of number, geometry embodies these eternal numerical relationships in a world of perpetual change. To enter a place of religious worship, designed and built according to geometric principles, is to physically enter an abode of the Eternal. A Gothic cathedral is one such example in which the cyclical rhythmic motions of the planets and the stars take on stable geometric forms down here on the earth.
This talk will focus upon Tom Bree’s new book The Cosmos in Stone – Sacred Geometry of a Master Mason. This ground-breaking research, which has taken several years to develop, demonstrates a Gothic designer’s use of geometry, cosmology, arithmetic, and musical ratios through a medieval Christian understanding of the cosmic journey of the soul – traversed in emulation of Christ’s Paschal journey.
It is hoped The Cosmos in Stone – Sacred Geometry of a Master Mason will be published in time for, and available at, the talk; alternatively, it may be pre-ordered at, or before, the talk.
Admission
CASH ONLY ON THE DOOR PLEASE
£8 or £5 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions
Full-time students with student ID card FREE
Includes light refreshments
Wednesday 22 March
LAMPETER STUDY DAY
Time & Tide: Voyaging in Enchanted Landscapes
JAMES HARPUR, HUGH LUPTON, CHRISTINE RHONE
In association with The University of Wales Trinity Saint David Harmony Programme
9.30am for 10am – 4.30pm
In the chair Hilary Davies
Venue University of Wales Trinity Saint David Lampeter Campus
ADVANCE BOOKINGS ONLY
Admission free
A light vegetarian lunch, and tea/coffee will be served, free of charge.
For more information, please refer to
https://www.temenosacademy.org/lampeter-study-day-22-march-2023/
Accommodation
There is a variety of accommodation available in Lampeter town. To enquire about B&B accommodation on the Lampeter campus please contact the Accommodation Office accommodation@uwtsd.ac.uk
ADVANCE BOOKING for ALL events please to temenosacademy@myfastmail.com
An email confirmation will be sent to you upon receipt of your booking. We would be grateful if you could please let us know if you are unable to attend as places are limited. Thank you!
TELEPHONE: (01233) 813663
COVID-19 REQUIREMENTS
Please do not attend if you or a member of your household has tested positive for Covid-19/has symptoms associated with the virus/are feeling unwell.
LENT TERM 2023 : PAST EVENTS
Thursday 26 January
Fishermen and Crofters: A Pattern and a Harmony
HILARY DAVIES
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[Image: Part of a larger Batik painting, The Holy City, by Thetis Blacker]
