Contact: The Artistry of Jesus in Nine Faces

(Paperback)

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Contact: The Artistry of Jesus in Nine Faces features the visual and written art of James Tughan. This book is a narrative reflection on imagination, creativity, and faith in which Tughan is the chronicler, his artistic works are the supporting cast, and the star of the story is the imaginative and creative God in whom "we live and move and have our being,"
(St. Paul, Acts 17:28).
The art featured in this text, Tughan's polyptych the Nine Faces of Christ, is a mature example of his cartographic style which employs symbolic imagery and trompe-l'oeil. Individually, and as a group, these images form a topographic map, dense and multilayered, of the artist's reflections on the Christian story while maintaining critical distance from the genre of Religious Art. Along with his visual art, Tughan includes nine poems that imagine God's perspective on the story and nine poems that reflect a human perspective on current events. Each of his poems, like his visual art has a topographical character. Tughan's narrative also has cartographic feel in the way it maps the artistic, spiritual, emotional, theological, and intellectual spaces wherein he locates the Nine Faces of Christ.
Although a reader may decide to read Contact: The Artistry of Jesus in Nine Faces in one or two sittings, this book is not intended to be a book that can be idly thumbed through and then set down. Rather, Tughan's intent is to engage the reader to journey with him as he reflects on his artistic process and the big story that informs it. To help the reader, all but one chapter begins with a set of questions that invite them to consider their perceptions of, and responses to, the focal piece of the chapter and concludes with second set of reflection questions to guide discussion by a book club, study group, etcetera.
I commend James for this imaginative and creative work which makes his artistry and thought accessible to those who have not seen his art. I also commend this book as one that can be read, contemplated, and perhaps enrich the life of the reader.
Kelvin Mutter, DTh

Author Bio

James Tughan is primarily known for being a visual artist working in visual mapping with chalk pastels, as a cartographic realist. This work celebrates attachment to visible surfaces of the northern Ontario wilderness but additionally with the less visible human psyche, through a careful use of metaphor. He is also an extensively published artist having had his work appear magazines such as Rolling Stone, GQ, House and Garden, Saturday Night, Financial Post Magazine, and Atlantic Monthly. As an art educator he is a past-serving member of the art faculties of Sheridan University, Redeemer University College and Tyndale Seminary and College.
More recently he has been drawn into the world of poetry, through the need to to articulate more directly certain aspects of the world of persons, the world of spirit, both in terms of lament and of celebration.
He is the founder of The Semaphore Fellowship and co-founder of the Flagship Gallery, Hamilton and its first born The Portage Art Group, a small collective of Ontario artists focused on mental health and the Arts. He is currently studying the intersection of theology, psychology, and artistry at McMaster Divinity College in the MTS/DPT program, where he is also the current artist in residence.
His work is available for viewing at: tughansemaphore.wordpress.com
The work of Portage is to be found at portagesemaphore.ca