A Retired Rector's Reflections

During my curacy in Barnard Castle I visited my old art teacher, Douglas Pittuck (1911-1993), who was retired and living in the town. Although I am not an artist he made art lessons at school a special time for me. He was a cheerful and personable man and a dedicated artist. He encouraged pupils to explore art and to discover different new ways of expression. We drew, modelled with clay, designed heraldic shields, created new book covers for favourite books, tried our hands at wood block printing, explored calligraphy and more.

Mr Pittuck (as we ever called him) was a passionate artist. On one visit to his studio I noticed an oil painting of grotesque heads. I asked him about them. They were, he said, the heads of members of the cabinet of the South African government. At that time the apartheid government was in control. Douglas was passionately angry about what they were doing to the black population, and produced a series of oil paintings, ‘Apartheid,’ to express this deep felt anger.

A couple of weeks ago I saw one of this series for sale and I was moved to buy it. The Makin report into the horrific physical abuse of boys by John Smyth, a powerful figure in the Church of England, had just been published. The evil controlling power of Smyth, and the terrible damage he did to so many young lives through his physical abuse, compounded by several bishops and clergy’s complete failure to care then and now for victims, is nothing less than a tragedy and disgrace in the church.

‘Tragedy’ was the name Douglas Pittuck gave to this painting. I have placed it prominently. It shows the bloody bruised body of a young black man being held, perhaps by his father, while a woman, it could be his mother, looks on in sorrow. The bowed faceless bodies indicate bleak sorrow and a resigned helplessness. The people walk onwards to us in the darkness. They have their their backs to the light, and we are shown the bruised bloody body. The artist holds us in the dark tragedy, and we look in silence and in deep sorrow. This, the painting tells us, is not a time to move away, or hide, from the horror of the brutal situation. It is not a time to talk of the light or produce solutions. It is a time to fall silent in the face of painful suffering, in the face of inhuman action, in the face of tragedy. It is a time to reflect on what we will do.

I look at the painting. It captivates and moves me, and it calls me to acknowledge and name the tragedy within me, and within the Church of England which I have served for many years. I look and am called to reflect deeply, to lament, and pray.