Snippet

Creed

Easter

Time

4 March 2025

3 min read

Don’t rush the creme eggs

As Lent approaches, mark each season for what it is.

Iona Curtius

Iona is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, studying how we can understand truth.

A giant creme egg lies smashed on the ground beside a tilted market barrow.

Creme Egg publicity stunt, 2012.

The Grocer.

Christmas before last, we ran out of milk on Boxing Day. An emergency of epic proportions that had to be remedied immediately with a trip to ASDA. Stepping out of the howling wind into the sanctuary of the entrance of ASDA, shaking my hood out of my face, I saw them. My stomach sank, dread rose, I heard my blood rushing in my ears… the Creme Eggs were back.

This may be a slightly exaggerated account. But there really were cream eggs at that ASDA. On Boxing Day. Now, I don’t want to launch into ‘back in the day…’ wailing or a bemoaning of the ignorant capitalist machine (that’s an article for another day…). But that moment really did give me pause.

Why does it matter? Well, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t. It mattered only because of what it represented to me: a rushing onwards, an inability to properly acknowledge and celebrate the seasons, a restlessness.

I have long found this (ever increasing) tendency to rush from one season to the next unhelpful and difficult to deal with. Every year, I am labelled the token grinch for refusing to join in the ‘Christmas cheer’ before December. I have, at times, leaned into that moniker. But it’s not actually true. I do like Christmas. All 12 days of it. None of which are in November, let alone October! (we’re getting dangerously close to rant-territory now.)

I love the anticipation of Advent. I find the slow blossoming of Spring every year one of the most joyful experiences we in temperate climes are lucky enough to witness. I enjoy the slowing down, the preparation of Autumn. I take comfort in the opportunity Winter gives for taking a break, for taking stock, re-evaluating, laying old things to rest. I find days like Ash Wednesday and All Saint’s Day so helpful and important. I don’t want to rush past Lent to Easter and chocolate.

I did not grow up in a liturgical tradition. So, when I joined a Church of Scotland a few years ago that marked these days and seasons, I felt like I had finally found a frame for my wandering.

Marking each season for what it is, appreciating its gifts, being present in the moment, not rushing ahead (or lagging behind) is so valuable. It gives me a ground, a certain foundation when everything else feels like it’s spinning, faster and faster. The news never stops, social media races past me and before I know it it’s time for pumpkin spice lattes, hot cross buns, Wham!ageddon, and Halloween, all at once. But Christmas is always on the 25th of December. Easter is always preceded by Lent and followed by Pentecost. Going through the year with these way-markers helps me to keep both feet on the ground and my gaze on the path ahead.

I’m not particularly invested in how exactly each season is marked. Whether it is cream eggs, or pumpkin spice, the first crocus, or the celebration of a saint’s feast, we all find different things helpful and attractive. What I do think is important is to recognise and mark the seasons.

I read a lot of headlines and posts at the start of the year that talked about how to beat the ‘overwhelm’ of modern daily life. I don’t pretend to know the answer or have a cure-all. I do think that one thing that can help is to step out of the consumerism-driven, ever-rushing, ever-increasing race through the seasons that never lets us stop for a minute to rest and reflect on the moment we are in right now.

So whether you want to mark Lent in a more traditional way, by giving something up, maybe attending an Ash Wednesday service, reflecting on life and death, or by perhaps buying yourself a bouquet of daffodils. I encourage you to mark this season in some way. Before rushing on to the Creme Eggs.

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Review

Art

Character

Creed

Easter

Suffering

18 April 2025

5 min read

Why sculpt the face of Christ?

In Nic Fiddian Green’s work we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A man looks up a shaft of light that illuminates him and a crucifix higher up a wall.

I Accepted, 2025.

Richard Foster.

The seeds of faith were sown in the life of Nic Fiddian Green by his father. As he has explained recently, he “was shown a way and a faith, and an understanding around the faith of Christianity, in the way my father lived”.

Later, his wife-to-be, Henrietta Hutley, asked him to help create Stations of the Cross for the Wintershall Estate in Surrey where, today, The Nativity and the Life of Christ are regularly performed. Henrietta’s father, Peter, wrote and brought The Passion of Jesus to Trafalgar Square, while her mother, Anne, had the vision for the Stations of the Cross project after a life-changing visit to Medjugorje.

Fiddian Green says that “The Face of Christ has been with me for over 40 years” and that he has “searched for His face through my art as part of my spiritual journey, and also in the work of many others – especially Renaissance artists like Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo”.

Fiddian Green, who is internationally celebrated for his monumental equine sculptures, has created a deeply personal and spiritually resonant exhibition entitled The Face of Christ. The exhibition features 20 new sculptures including works in bronze, copper, lead, marble, plaster, and silver, together with a series of drawings. The exhibition ranges from the Nativity to the Resurrection but focuses primarily on the crucifixion.

The exhibition is deeply personal for Fiddian Green because it is informed by the harrowing encounters he had with an array of life-threatening illnesses a few years ago. These caused an obvious and honest creative re-assessment and it is from these experiences that a stronger, deeper and more contemplative vision has emerged. One that permeates the new work via modes of stillness and reflection.

The Face of Christ offers a profoundly meditative engagement with the image of Christ, capturing a sense of serenity, resilience, and transcendence in bronze and stone. In these works, he shows us how his spirit and his faith help him triumph over the physical as he explores the enduring power of faith, suffering and redemption. In the eyes of his work, we feel pain, strength, fear, wisdom and more as he asks questions of the viewer that leave a powerful and spiritual resonance.

Fiddian Green says: “These works are a reflection of my journey of faith. I have come to find that His power to elevate us underpins everything I strive to do and The Face of Christ is an attempt for me to convey in my work all that He conveys in my heart. Christ gives me the key, but will I open the door…?”

A sketch shows the hanging head of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

This Storm Will Pass, 2024. Slademore Gallery.

A crucifix hands on a round-topped slab.

I Paid, 1993. Slademore Gallery.

Crown of Thorns, 2025. Nic Fiddian Green.

While the exhibition focuses on the crucifixion and the face of the crucified Christ, the expression on Christ’s face is generally one of peace, rather than pain. In part, this is because many of the heads of Christ included are images of Christ resting in death prior to the resurrection. The brokenness that the crucifixion brought is shown in these images through damage to the body of Christ, as opposed to the expressions on his face. This is most powerfully the case with ‘Broken for You’, a bronze crucifixion sculpture where Christ’s torso, as well as being scarred by a long spear-like fissure, has also been fractured with the two parts fused together using brace brackets. Similar fissures appear on other of the crucifixion sculptures but ‘Broken for You’ goes furthest in graphically showing the pain Christ endured on our behalf.

It seems to me that Fiddian Green could go further in revealing the horrors that Christ endured and that his love of Renaissance art with its focus on beauty and balance might hold him back in this regard. Another artist to have regularly depicted the Crucifixion in images shown in mainstream galleries in recent years is Peter Howson, whose images of the crucifixion are much more expressionist graphically capturing the depth of pain that Christ endured. Fiddian Green’s drawings, more than his sculptures, tap into the sense of pain endured, particularly ‘This Storm will Pass’, a partial image of the face of the crucified Christ which in its frenetic pencil-marks and incomplete state speaks particularly powerfully.

Fiddian Green, by contrast, primarily gives us a sense of the peace that he receives from Christ on the face of Christ. ‘I Forgive’, a bronze head of the crucified Christ depicts the love with which Christ looks on us as he endures the cross. ‘Christ is Laid to Rest’ is a huge head encircled by a crown of massive spikey thorns with green verdigris overtones suggesting the sweat and blood of anguish which has led to the completion of purpose that Christ finds in death. ‘Peace’, a plaster sculpture of Christ’s head, is also redolent of the supreme achievement of the cross; ‘It is finished’, meaning that all his work is complete and done, enabling him to rest and enabling us to enter rest.

In these images, Fiddian Green is reading back into the events of the crucifixion the outcomes that it gains for us and showing, in his Christ figures, the peace that he personally finds in the love and forgiveness which overflows from the crucified Christ to each and every human being throughout time and history.

Fiddian Green writes of having “been given materials to use by the God of heaven and earth” – those materials of the earth that he uses in his sculptures – and says that “it is my hope that some of these pieces may rest and resonate with those who see it; that they may find a deep connection by gazing on the works which takes the eye, the heart and the soul to the One who helped me create them”.

While Lent, Holy Week and Easter are often times when art is offered to enable us to walk in the footsteps of Christ it is not common for commercial galleries to specifically invite meditation on these events, so don’t miss the opportunity for contemplation that the Sladmore Gallery is providing through this exhibition.

The Face of Christ, 10th April – 2nd May 2025, Sladmore Gallery, London.

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