THE MONK AND THE PAINTER
Painting is not alien to the monastic life; it is a contemplative activity.
Painting is learning to look and to see; it opens the eyes to the visible world all around us, and in and through this world, to the ceaseless stirring of life in all that is.
Seeing opens the mind and the heart to wonder; and wonder discloses a mystery in the heart of all that has being and life. Filled with amazement we are filled with desire to express, to externalize in some form, all that has filled the eye and mind and heart.
These paintings are my response, as a monk and a painter, to the ever-changing world of nature surrounding this Abbey. This is a world which is never still, but always, either coming to life, or returning to its origins in the hope of a new beginning.
It is a world of bewilderingly complex patterns and harmonies, but, above all, a world filled with an energy which reveals the mysterious power and wisdom and goodness within all nature, The God who is the Life of all that lives.
Br Duncan Smith
