Seasons: Telling stories of God and life through landscape painting
Jan 2, 2025
Dedicated to the memory of Susie Menadue
“Beale’s art has always combined lyricism with a marked technical competence. There is a close observation of the moods of nature, the patterns of light and a celebration of the miracle of life that pervades against the forces of darkness. In these late works, a quiet spiritualism creeps into his art like a flickering candle that continues to shine despite the gusts of wind. Posterity eventually sorts out the standing of artists, and I suspect that, in retrospect, Roger Beale will be remembered as an artist who possessed his own unique voice in his art, which differentiated him from many others of his generation.” – Professor Sasha Grishin
My latest series of paintings is called “Seasons”. It tracks two years in the lives of my wife and myself, and our relationship with faith, through landscape. You could think of it as an extended metaphor for human resilience, acceptance with the aid of God’s grace of inevitable change, adaptation to new circumstances, the incredible boon of the hope born of faith and the joy of hope fulfilled. It tracks the essence of Ecclesiastes 3 – in paint.
In many ways the painting Bending not Breaking is a summation of two years which were entered with my wife confined to a wheelchair having been told she would never walk, but ended with her walking two kilometres a day. Her clinicians have described her journey as incredibly rare. At the same time I have had to accept that the late effects of polio are changing the way I paint, as well as live. I am a long-term wheelchair user as a result of polio incurred in 1948.
Bending not Breaking shows trees above a seawall that have persisted and adapted to a harsh environment. But it also shows a remarkable burst of new life from between the concrete slabs. On the horizon the blue sky symbolises the hope in new beginnings, not always or necessarily physical, that God offers as an act of grace.
It might seem odd to see this as a religious painting. We are so accustomed to equating Christian art with icons, Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, the lives (and particularly deaths) of the Saints or illustrations of stories from the Bible in short figurative paintings.
But there is another tradition in Western religious art. Toward the end of the 18th century Europe suddenly saw the landscape again. For almost the first time it became the focus of major paintings.
And in many of those works, artists were seeking to describe their awesome wonder at the sublime and human insignificance compared to nature. For many this was an expression of religious faith – God revealed through and in the Creation. None more so than in the work of German artist, and a personal favourite of mine, Caspar David Friedrich.
There were, of course, many, many others right through to the current day. Often they are grouped together as Transcendental Artists – a sub-group of the broader Romantic Realist movement to which I suppose I belong.
Sasha Grishin, in his perceptive review of this series, picked up on these resonances and the meaning of my work. Consider what he said about my Moonlight Deakin: “Moonlight Deakin, 2022 – a treescape executed within a restricted palette – shows a break in the clouds like a torn pathway for an escaping soul.”
There are 35 paintings in my current series and it would be impossible to reproduce them all. Together they form a meditation on Ecclesiastes 3: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest…. All are from dust, and turn to dust again.”
So what to do? To paraphrase Ecclesiastes – enjoy our work for that is our lot; be aware of our impact on succeeding generations but don’t dwell on what will be after us.
To see more of Roger’s art go to www.humblehouse.com.au or to www.rogerbeale.com.au
Republished from Engage, a publication of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, issue 17 of December 2024
Roger was the longest-serving disabled Departmental Secretary (of Environment and Heritage) in the history of the APS – there have only been two since 1901. He contracted polio in 1948 and uses a wheelchair, leg braces and crutches.
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