Beauty, therefore, for the modern and postmodern artist has become a highly dubious metaphor for a discredited belief system.

Put crudely, one is left with a choice between two unsatisfactory combinations: artistic integrity married to spiritual compromise; and spiritual integrity married to artistic banality-or, worse, art compromised on both counts. Neither one will satisfy those who recognize the fundamental necessity of integrity in both faith and art.

Postmodernism has not overcome the problems of modernism, but only compounded them with a dosis of cynicism, relativism and indifference.

Redemption in Christ should give the artistically gifted not only a new orientation and a new sense of purpose, but also a new vision of reality, seeing the world through the eyes of faith, looking at the human condition through the eyes of Christ.

Who is one's audience, the spiritually hostile professional art world or one's visually insensitive Christian neighbour?

Beyond the pervasive disinterest in the visual arts among the Protestant community, the core problem lies in the fact that the art world rejects on several grounds work that is in any way explicitly Christian in content and also shrugs off as naive anything that has the semblance of hope or optimism in outlook.

Beyond a narrow, elite audience, there is a pervasive sense from the side of the public that much contemporary art fails to connect - a failure not evident throughout centuries of earlier art.