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The Nearer You Stand
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Roger Wagner’s visual world is immediately recognisable – the subtle juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar, Syria and Oxfordshire, ancient and modern, a solitary woman threatened by men with stones and men with cellphone cameras, so often within a landscape of overwhelming radiance, local and unearthly all at once. Here these images are woven around with reflective prose and with poetry that has the same unsettling radiance. A book of transfigurations.
Rowan Williams
https://canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781786222220/the-nearer-you-stand
Church Times Review by Richard Harries https://www.dropbox.com/s/9w0tdjdb4v0ip1i/CTS024.pdf?dl=0
Roger Wagner, in my mind, is one of the most important artists working today. The Nearer YouStand captures his immense gift as a painter, and… his adroit integrative power of communication that speaks powerfully into our souls. Makoto Fujimura, artist
Mark Oakley, author of The Splash of Words
Although we rarely use ‘truth’ as a value of modern art, it is unavoidable in considering the poetry and painting of Roger Wagner… perhaps it is the note of quiet conviction that makes these poems, paintings and prints so compelling. Christopher le Brun, President of the Royal Academy of Arts
Here are paintings and poems which help us to see in a new way, and challenge our habits and assumptions. Modern scenes are re-imagined as alive with biblical resonance, and biblical scenes are brought into new relevance and focus. Roger Wagner, in luminous, often numinous art, and in precise and plangent verse, restores our sense of wonder even as he sharpens our vision.
Malcolm Guite, poet and writer
Roger Wagner is a sober and clear poet and a remarkable, perhaps a towering artist …he has the power to create a myth.
Peter Levi, Professor of Poetry (1984-89), University of Oxford
Be prepared to be startled by his profound simplicity. Esther de Waal author of Seeking God
Here are paintings and poems which help us to see in a new way, and challenge our habits and assumptions. Modern scenes are re-imagined as alive with biblical resonance, and biblical scenes are brought into new relevance and focus. Roger Wagner, in luminous, often numinous art, and in precise and plangent verse, restores our sense of wonder even as he sharpens our vision.
Malcolm Guite, poet and writer
