SOPHIE LÉVY BURTON Soul Sister

I have found that artists, more than writers, will acknowledge this. I certainly felt it as more of an immediate experience when I was painting. I’m interested to see in the future what MONK throws out about this. Being human we can’t actually quite define it – and that’s how MONK engages with it – the specific acts of creation – as well as the spiritual.

I would never edit out contributors who weren’t specifically religious or faithful. MONK strives for breadth when looking at artistic creation: at its birth all art in a way involves its makers in a spiritual experience, no matter how we define this.

My own painting has only just begun, really, my exploration of it, the themes. When Cornelius was dying I began to paint very vivid abstracts. I do feel looking back that that was an extraordinary series of months, when I was pulling something out of my psyche and connecting to something I was experiencing in a deep, deep way. Call it God or the divine, the numinous, the universal consciousness. I certainly didn’t feel in control of brush marks. People repeatedly say the paintings are joyful. The geometric shapes, the brush marks … I can’t really decode them; particular strokes, repetition –flicks, like Arabic script – it was very immediate, fluid, fluent, child-like. It felt spontaneous.

“I remember Fay Weldon once said to me that as people dropped off going to church they took up creative writing courses…”

And then funnily – or not – at some point I spontaneously remembered I used to do very colourful pattern-colouring, mandala-like, as a child – using felt tips – do you remember you could get a huge variety of felt tips in a plastic case? – I remember being absorbed into the colours, running my fingers over the colours all lined up so perfectly straight like an extended rainbow.