Showing posts with label session. Show all posts
Showing posts with label session. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2017
3am planning session time of my own
3am planning session time of my own
I guess we all have 3:00am planning sessions lying in bed thinking.....2 or 3 in the morning is always good planning time for me. If I remember any of it in the morning, its clear what I should pay attention to. Aside from my 72x96 floundering on my easel, Im working on several other things; securing framing for a smaller works show opening this coming Friday at my Crossroads Gallery. It will feature about 40 plus paintings from 2009. None have ever been in a frame or exhibited before. Yesterday after working on it 24/7, my first shipment arrived. All are standard small sizes up to 16x20, all sizes popular amongst artists........I found inventory seriously low out there in better framing... especially if you want multiples in a size as I did. Thanks to JFM it got done at the last minute! They were low on inventory too so a portion had to be custom. Not a problem for me because I like mixing stock and custom framing together.... it raises the framing bar over simply using stock frames.
What it tells me tho is the art business must be booming out there......how cool is that! I actually thought the framing would be the least problematic of everything in front of me. Boy was I wrong!
SOME FIRST PLEIN AIR PAINTINGS
Some works being released Friday evening at Crossroads
2 Libby Terrace 10x10 oil on panel (3-18-09)
(my first ever plein air painting)
Frames make a difference
11 James at Libby Terrace 11x14 oil on panel (4-14-09)
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826 Libby Sunrise 11x14 oil on linen (6-12-13)
(Most recent plein air from the same location)
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12 Libby Terrace on Easter Sunday 14x18 oil on panel (4-12-09)
Recently I decided to release older works to give me painting time and not have to worry about keeping fresh work available. It gave my inventory or collection a value I never considered before......the value of time, time to call my own and still stay in the game. I had that in the beginning, but it started to slip away with gallery needs, commissions and untold numbers of events all taking my time away from what I do well.....we all face it. The question is how to get it back! The next five years are important... I can paint, but its what I paint thats important now. I dont need more inventory nor do I want to paint for it! Im sure in the future there will be works added to it, but not because I need it.
Effectively, with the opening of the Crossroads "In Search of Light and Colour" Friday evening, I will have reclaimed my time as my own again!
However, the real reason I was having my 3am session was about the canvas on my easel.....after some hard core evaluation, its fairly clear to me my canvas is too big for this particular idea. Aside from all the distractions, I need better reference material and more work on a smaller scale before bouncing up to a billboard. If I were ready, it would have worked out of the gate.....in time it will!! I decided to move on, change subjects to something Im comfortable with sizing up and get on with it!
Later.....
Available link for download
Thursday, December 22, 2016
20 headlines about churchless christians from yesterday FaithResearch2016 conference 1st session
20 headlines about churchless christians from yesterday FaithResearch2016 conference 1st session
On Wednesday 18/5/16 I attended the 2016 Faith in Research Conference in Birmingham UK. At the foot of this post are links to other selected posts from various talks/conferences.
Research&Stats CofE ?@cofestats Great turn out at #FaithResearch2016
The conference is organised by the CofE’s Research & Statistics Dept. The Bishop of Manchester welcomed attendees and amongst other things reminded us that ...
Barry Hill ?@revbarryhill #FaithResearch2016 @BishManchester reminds us that research & facts are our friends in discernment (though hopefully not our only friends!)
Following the headlines below is some more detail about the 1st session at the conference on research on churchless christians. But if you are in a big hurry the headlines are:
15% of churchless Christians have never attended a church. As concerns the other 85% …
1) the majority still had their faith and for many that was important to them & their lives;
2) in gender and age they were representative of congregations;
3) most didn’t leave when they moved home – ½ had spent their whole lives in the area;
4) ¼ had long term 25yr + commitment to the church;
5) they disengaged from church gradually over a long time of frustration & deep soul searching;
6) they did not disengage over trivial issues - 1/3rd left due to changes in themselves, 25% felt they didnt fit in, 1/3rd mentioned sermons relevance, ½ mentioned church feeling like another planet;
7) most still felt part of the worldwide Church;
8) when they leave nobody notices or they leave without a fuss;
9) in situations where there was a "final straw" that led to them leaving 50% said it had to do with a life crisis and 20% said the church had let them down at a time of personal need;
10) some said they left as they had a hunger for deeper teaching whereas that provided locally was superficial;
11) some said that the lack of opportunities to explore questions and doubts was a reason for them leaving;
13) some found that when they left the church “it was like getting an 8th day each week” as they had been expected to commit so much time to remaining part of a congregation;
14) 2/3rds of leavers had no intention of re-engaging;
15) for the remaining 1/3rd the reasons they gave for leaving were 1/3rd about style preferences and 2/3rds about fitting in with rest of their life;
16) leavers fill the church gap with fellowship and friendship;
17) sexuality wasn’t an issue for leavers – theological issues were the main reason for a small no. of leavers;
18) maybe some of the leavers are pioneers the church failed to ID;
19) leavers aren’t angry with the church
Steve Aishorpe on “The Invisible Church: Learning from the experience of churchless Christians”
Steve is the Church of Scotland’s Mission Development Worker and he has written a book on this. He started by pointing out that typically churchless Christians are seen as a problem - leakage that needs to be fixed.
Charlie P ?@CharliePeer link to tweetSteve Aisthorpe wanted his book to be reliable, readable, and accessible. How refreshing. #FaithResearch2016
- His research commenced with some 30 in depth interviews where interviewees were asked to talk about their story as relates to church. There were no structured questions and from the recorded interviews some 27 themes came out.
- Further research was via some 2500 telephone interviews - from which the stats in the tweet below emerged. This left some 423 valid surveys as concerns looking at churchless Christians
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Meg Gilley ?@MegGilley1 link to tweet
44% Ppl who stop going to church still have faith, half high scorers on religiosity scale #FaithResearch2016
(Later in the research these surveys were compared with the other areas of Scotland and found to be representative in that: a) the respondents mirrored the geographic distribution of the general population; b) Some 60% were female, 40% male – representative of congregations, c) 50% were baby boomers; d) 50% had spent their whole lives in the area; e) 25% had been with a congregation more than 25 years; f)
Simon Foster ?@roseheadboy #FaithResearch2016 15% non-attending Christians have NEVER belonged to a church.
Note also that d) above seems to counter the idea that people leaving church is linked to them moving homes, and e) above seems to counter the idea that leavers are somehow not committed to the church.
So what were some of the findings from this survey of churchless christians?
1) The majority had not lost their faith.
(Of course an obvious challenge is what did respondents mean when they said they were christian – by using the Hoge Intrinsic Religiousity Scale it was determined that 1/2 thought their faith was important to them and made a difference to how they conducted their lives)
2) They disengaged from church gradually.
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