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ArtWay.eu has been hailed “a jewel in the crown of work in Christianity and the arts”. Founded in 2009 by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the daughter of the renowned art historian, Hans Rookmaaker, ArtWay publishes materials and resources for scholars, artists, art enthusiasts and congregations concerned about linking art and faith. In 2023, ArtWay came under the custodianship of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge. The Kirby Laing Centre seeks to develop Christian research that is rooted in spirituality and practised in community. Our goal is to preserve legacy of ArtWay and build on the highly prized foundation that has already been laid.
ArtWay desires to open eyes for the beauty and meaning of art, so that more and more people may begin to enjoy the vast treasury of art that has been and is being produced and to learn to discern the spirits as mature and culturally aware viewers.
We advocate a thoughtful engagement with art and culture over against an uninformed rejection or uncritical embrace. While dealing with works of art, we will always have an eye for the form as well as the content. To us, it is important to note that this content is formed by the spiritual dimension of a work, whether Christian, Buddhist, post-modern or other. Specifically we look for voices of truth, hope and love in the art of the past and the present.
In recent years the number of Christian artists who produce good work has grown in addition to the number of well-informed and insightful books and essays about art written by believers. The impact of all this seems at times to be limited to a rather small group of the initiated. ArtWay intends to bring Christian art and reflection about art to a greater public.
It is our dream that the Christian world may become familiar with the quality art that is increasingly available. It is our dream that these works may find their way into our homes, schools, churches and other cultural institutions, that they may become more widely known.
Images can instruct, inspire and feed us as much as words can. We therefore will give suggestions and develop materials for the use of good images in the church, in the liturgy, in small-group gatherings, on the LCD projector, in the church bulletin and church buildings. Moreover, we hope to stimulate the re-evaluation of the place of the image. The fact that we live in an image oriented culture and that we ourselves have therefore also become more visually oriented, makes this re-evaluation all the more urgent.
We understand Christian art to be not merely art that deals with Christian religious themes, but all art that is rooted in a Christian view of life. A landscape or still life, abstract work or scream of doubt or protest, all such art can spring from Christian convictions. There are, moreover, various callings: some artists will prefer to make art for the Church or their fellow believers, others see it as their calling to make work for their non-believing neighbours, the art world or the culture around them. To us, all of these callings are legitimate.
By means of book reviews, information and web-links, ArtWay showcases and opens up what has been and is being written about art, whether popularly or scholarly, philosophically or theologically, meditatively or liturgically oriented. In this way we hope to be a platform for reflection about art and to stimulate dialogue.
ArtWay is proud to be recognised as a digital heritage site by UNESCO in the Netherlands. With a vast collection of articles, we feature works from numerous artists and have contributions from a diverse group of writers.
Articles in our Library
Artists Featured
Countries Represented
Editor-in-Chief (English)
Otto Bam holds an MA in English studies from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, as well as a master’s in Religion and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He is the arts manager for and a fellow of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge.
Editor-in-Chief (Dutch)
Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker has a background in musicology (University of Amsterdam) with minors in art history, philosophy and liturgical studies (Free University in Amsterdam). For many years she worked as an editor, translator, researcher and writer. She edited the Complete Works of her father (art historian Hans Rookmaaker) and has written about popular music, liturgy and the visual arts. She contributed to over twenty books. She has worked as co-editor on The Artsistic Sphere, a book about (neo-)Calvinism and art. She lives in Langbroek in the Netherlands.
Associate Editor
Laurel Gasque is Associate Editor of ArtWay and the author of Art & the Christian Mind: The Life & Work of H.R. Rookmaaker. She has pioneered the Arts & Theology programme at Regent College (Vancouver, BC, Canada) and the Faculty and Graduate Student Ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of Canada as well as taught Art History at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada.
