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Gerard Stamp turns architecture into art. He converts stone and brick, light and shadow, the tilt of a roof and the line of a wall into a living, exhilarating picture. His eye for the power of style is unerring, whether the fluting on a pillar or the tracery in a window. He gives depth and character to the simplest buttress or the blandest patch of limestone. Above all, his pictures evoke the mystery of English churches.
Under his brush, buildings that have often become functional and banal are restored to their gothic glory. He fills space with atmosphere by a shaft of light or a splash of colour.
English churches have gone without celebration since the days of Betjeman and Clifton-Taylor. They are dismissed as preaching boxes or social centres, properties that present their users with nothing but costly problems. Their historic role as galleries of vernacular art - and the role of their creators as artists - has long been ignored in the onward march of specialist curatorship. Most of England's finest ecclesiastical art has been removed to national museums. Only the architecture remains. |
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Stamp is clearly inspired by the gallery of church architecture. He shows that the only true museum - and every church is in part a museum - is one filled by local people who have used and improved it day by day, one that embodies their memories and their achievements. In his depiction of churches great and small he celebrates the most genuine English art, that of the church, and does so in terms that genuine English artists would applaud.
SIMON JENKINS
Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC.
Click here to view paintings from the exhibition
Click here to visit the Burnham Grapevine gallery website |
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