Almost silently, the small crowd moved from room to room gazing on the works of art with only a comment and the whirl of the explanatory CD-ROMs to break the stillness. It was a wet Wednesday night, an ideal evening to spend contemplating the last 2000 years of Christian art as displayed in Seeing Salvation.

On a slightly drier morning earlier in spring one artist had offered me his reflections on Christian art at the beginning of the next 2000 years. Hidden behind the large red gates of Battersea Business Centre on Lavender Hill, is Charlie Mackesey's studio - a creative hub hidden in a warren of studios and warehouses. Everyone I spoke to on the way in seemed to know Charlie, and despite the fact that we had never met before he and I were soon standing amidst discarded paint rags and works of art debating whether or not Christian art had totally lost its plot.

It would be difficult to have a superficial chat with Charlie, whose paint-stained combat trousers and slightly wild curly hair made a refreshing change from the slick suits walking around our Westminster offices. We went straight from "hello" into the kind of discussion that you normally have at 2am in the morning to avoid writing an essay at University. We began talking at 10am but soon reached lunchtime, Charlie pausing every now and then to wind up or down his easel, me to turn over the tape in an effort to keep up.

Art and Faith Combined
Charlie paints like most of us breathe. He scribbled a few rude pictures to pass around the class at school, but that was about it - nothing profound, no great plans to be an artist. Leaving school years later, he discovered faith and art all at once.

"Art was really simultaneous with my conversion to Christianity," Charlie explained. "It helped me to learn, and when I was going through the conversion process my bridge was drawing - I would sit there for days and days and days and just draw. I facilitated my receiving God."

Because faith and art were totally inseparable to Charlie, he never lasted longer than a day at Art College - one at City and Guilds, one at Exeter University and one in America.

"I was more interested in not crushing what was inside of me, which was more important at that time than what was going on canvas, and I wanted to protect that," he said, adding another layer to his latest painting.

"Also, I wanted to make sure that I wanted to be true to whatever it was that I had discovered. I think it would have been a very hard job to retain that, for me anyway, because I was quite weak.

Art and Pain
Charlie was brutally honest throughout our interview, describing how he felt totally lost after the death of five friends recently. It was on the subject of pain and horror that the National Gallery arose.

"In some of the images within the National Gallery the pain was just unbelievable. Because of what has happened to me over the last couple of months I was absolutely fed in that. I was fed by Christ - I saw images of Jesus that were in pain and fed me - he identified with this suffering."

There are some incredibly painful images in the exhibition that I found almost overwhelming when I went around for the second time. Charlie expressed how much more relevant such art could be to someone suffering, than a quiet platitude from someone in leadership.

"This has so much more value than some vicar standing up and saying, "Well, never mind, you know - God is this, God is that," he said. "That doesn't reach where I am at, and if it doesn't do anything for me then it won’t do anything for Joe Bloggs in the street."

Charlie has introduced a recurring theme here, as an artist whose original work was literally sold in the street to people who saw him sitting around London drawing its architecture. Now he focuses on "people on the street" as he calls them, meaning everyone other than art critics. All because he fears the Church isn’t taking Christian artists seriously at a time when the cut throat world of art "fears beauty" and has a "paranoia that it's not cool or artistically correct" to create something beautiful.

"It's a very difficult environment to breed good Christian artists," Charlie considered. "They are not being supported anywhere. I don’t think the Church values it and I don’t think the world values it - so who does?

Outreach
"For me it's a real privilege when I get letters from people, and as happened recently, it said: 'I'd had the drawing on the wall and my son was killed. I look at the picture every morning and there is just something in it that gives me hope.'

"I think well, that makes it worth it. She hasn’t written to me and said, 'I've said the prayer to Jesus and I'm a fully baptised Christian, praise the Lord', which she may do, she may head in that direction."

The picture in question is another version of what Charlie is working on in front of me - The Return of the Prodigal Son. There, in the middle of the canvas a father hugs his exhausted son who has returned to his arms, whilst the story runs across the canvas in explanation. It was The Return of the Prodigal Daughter, with a Father holding his daughter that had caught my attention in Bear Grylls boat the other week. It is a powerful image of God's grace and one the son hangs in the chapel at the recently opened Ashfield Young Offenders Institution near Bristol.

Prisons
Prisons tend to conjure up images of austerity rather than beauty, but Charlie believes there is a sense of expectation and questioning within them that you don’t find outside.

"You are constantly reminded of your own failure," says Charlie, who started visiting prisons soon after his conversion, "because that's what Christians do isn’t it, visit prisons?"

Of his painting for the prison chapel, he says: "You know the reactions will be strong. They may be good, they may be negative, but they will be strong and that is what you want. The reactions to Christ were anything but "how nice," it was either very positive or very negative."

"It has had quite a profound effect on people," commented the Rev Greg Downes, Chaplain at Ashfield, who commissioned Charlie. "People are often moved to tears - it resonates with quite a few people. The rejection and acceptance - people here know what it is to experience the bankruptcy of life.

Describing the picture as "the one thing of creativity and beauty within the prison", Greg Downes explained how the whole chapel came to be dedicated as The Chapel of the Prodigal Son.

"There are 400 young men in here, " he said. "I didn't want the chapel to be named after just any saint. I had earlier read Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal, and seen the Rembrandt painting in St Petersburg. I wanted the theme to be almost prophetic and symbolic - to me that parable seemed to be right."

Which is how the 5ft by 5ft painting now hangs in an otherwise bare room - and features on the official guide to the prison, followed by the Prison Governor when he takes magistrates and other visitors around on a tour.

Schools
Take the painting into a totally different context, and you have Charlie explaining the relevance of faith to girls in a well-heeled sixth form.

"Art stimulates people to think, to educate and to give hope with the Kingdom of God," said Charlie, describing the school as a "totally unchurched environment."

"It was really wonderful to use the painting to understand Jesus' side of things, and what God felt for them." This might be a million miles from Ashfield prison, but the message of the prodigal son had lost none of its punch. Asked how the girls reacted, Charlie said:

"Well, some of them are quiet, so you don’t know. Some cry, some are angry either because they haven't experienced that acceptance or they have been abused. It brings up very varied reactions, so if you can talk it helps, even though with this one the story is written across the back so it’s as explanatory as it could be. You still need to address the issues around it - that Jesus loves us, what love is, what God is, why we need him."

This is especially true when pupils often have no idea of the famous Bible stories that so many of us take for granted.

"It's harder now than ten years ago," said Charlie. "Then, if you can imagine Christianity was an option on a food dispenser - so you have options and choices, you could have fruit or sticky pudding. Christianity was on that plate. Now, it is become less and less an option and more and more non-existent or laughable. It's abit like bringing in a sort of strange or exotic fruit no one has seen before or tasted before.

"In some ways this is quite good, because it means that they haven't had religion panned into them and they haven't been put off. But in another way it's a tragedy because they haven't got a clue."

This is where Charlie becomes passionate about the role of art in bringing faith and spirituality to the nation.

"In times gone, there were things like stained glass windows that told stories, things that people understood and yet we have none of that now. There is nothing public for people to learn from - nothing.

Uncomfortable Emotions
"The Church doesn’t encourage it, probably because it even has this idea that arts are from the Devil, that they are too risqué or they are too emotional and not literal enough, and we are a very literary country. We think that words are the only trustworthy things and that our emotions are dangerous. Because fine art bypasses reason, we’re scared of it."

From the middle of his studio, with images of pain surrounding him on canvas Charlie spoke his passion for honest, real and sometimes painful images to reach people.

"With art, we need to not be too precious and cautious about the images - they need to be hardcore, they need to be going where the Church is at. It’s no good just painting pictures of Jesus hanging on the cross anymore - there are other issues at stake."

Selecting his painting of a young girl in mid-scream being clasped by God, Charlie said:

"It hits the pain and we need to know it. It’s not nice, and we need to know that in that context of 'not-niceness' God can meet us." Much as in the Psalms, as Charlie recalled - "you can be very angry with them and very real, very honest." It is, he continues, a need to show that Christians suffer yet also have this transcendent hope.

"I think the marriage of these two things is vital and I think that is what's missing. This is what Gerard Manley Hopkins managed to write about, it’s what the Psalmist spoke about. It's what these paintings are about in the National Gallery - it's the tension between pain and hope, between ugliness and beauty, despair and love - or loneliness and love. It’s that tension of existence. God is the creator and we have this massive opportunity to express all of it, and we don’t."

It’s his honest expression of faith that Charlie believes art dealers are craving for, despite the negative attitude towards Christianity.

"The art dealers are always saying, 'Why is there not more?'" he commented, who had been showing his Prodigal Son to a dealer the day before we met. "They are irritated and saying, 'We want the images, we are searching for them - what is everyone doing, where have they all gone?

"I chat to them, and the one who came round yesterday said, 'I'm not a Christian, but it's great you’re doing this stuff. We need it and want it, our culture needs it.'

"They are saying this and they’re not Christians. I don’t think they want images that are patronising, or cheesy or predictable or expected. They want things that are moving and raw and honest and are about what it is like to have a faith in the world that we live in. They want to be lifted, they want to be encouraged - but there is nothing there."

Claire Shelley is News Editor of "The Church of England Newspaper" and Managing Editor of CounterCulture.

email: claireshelley76@hotmail.com

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