Paintings shed light on mysteries of faith.
THE WONDER OF THE CHRISTIAN STORY and THE MAJESTY OF THE MASS
by Elizabeth Wang (Radiant Light, £6 each).
by Greg Watts, 2003
(This article was published in The Catholic Times, Manchester, England, October 26th 2003, p. 8, Bookcase . Reproduced by kind permission, copyright © The Catholic Times, 2003.)
It’s unlikely that Elizabeth Wang will ever be considered for the Turner Prize, or have her paintings lauded in the arts sections of the broadsheets. But that won’t bother her. Her aim as an artist is shed light on the mysteries of faith. A selection of her paintings have been used to illustrate her books The Wonder of the Christian Story and The Majesty of the Mass, both published by Radiant Light, a spiritual movement she founded, and available from St Paul’s bookshop, next to Westminster Cathedral.
In a sense, what she writes is very much secondary to the illustrations. It is her paintings, with their swirling bright colours, that really speak to you. One of the most striking paintings is The Bridge to Heaven, which is used on the cover of The Wonder of the Christian Story. Christ stands with his arms out-stretched, like a bridge, between heaven and earth, while a great throng of people can be seen making their way across.
In The Majesty of the Mass, Communio depicts crowds of people surrounded a lone priest who is distributing communion. “It’s a bit like Galilee when the crowds were struggling to be close to Jesus,” writes Wang. These books with their extraordinary and powerful illustrations can serve both as excellent aids to prayer and teaching tools to explain the story of salvation.