Scroll down to read our Seven Principles

We aim to train people who want to paint and to draw beautiful art with skill and believe that anyone can learn to draw with the right training. We teach traditional skills with a traditional rigour and a traditional ethos that opens the artist up to inspiration beyond the artist. We reject the modern ethos that puts self-expression before training or beauty. The artist is the channel for inspiration, not the source of it.

Some people will want to learn only the artistic skills. If that is the case we are happy to help them do that and no more. However, we believe that many will wish to develop these skills as a living tradition that incorporates the timeless principles of beauty, truth and goodness, yet reflects its time. We will help students to do this by offering lectures and talks to those who are interested – lectures that explore the visual vocabulary of the tradition they are learning, and how the great Masters used this to manifest their worldview.

If today’s artist is to flourish and not be restricted to pastiche, he or she must understand the visual vocabulary of their tradition so that they can articulate their own message within that visual language. Study of this will include consideration of the spiritual values that inform the tradition they are learning, very often neglected today. Some will wish to explore the spiritual dimension in order to open themselves up to inspiration in their art or just for personal fulfilment. We are not spiritual gurus, but we strive to ensure that the atmosphere will be one that encourages each person in a sincere quest for objective truth, for it is this quest for truth that opens the individual artist to inspiration.

Our own inspiration for doing this comes from our Christian faith. However, this same faith encourages us to respect other religious traditions and recognise in all of them a search for God and for objective truth.

For those who wish to develop the theology and philosophy of art with more academic rigour we recommend the one-year distance-learning diploma, Art, Inspiration and Beauty at the Maryvale Institute. This lays down the full theoretical foundation upon which this new art school has been founded. It has been designed with artists and patrons of the arts in mind.

Seven Principles

These principles were listed at the end of David Clayton's article 'The Way of Beauty'.
1. Artists should aspire to be good artists. Good artists create good works of art. Good works of art possess or reflect both objective truth and beauty.
2. Artists can be educated to grow in their love of goodness, beauty and truth. Such an education will enhance their ability to manifest these transcendental, objective qualities in their work.
3. Artists have a responsibility to provide a social and spiritual service to mankind. Good art, whether sacred or secular in subject or context, uplifts, enlarges and inspires the hearts of those who see it to a deeper love for the Creator and his Creation. This is manifested in a deeper love for mankind and increasing compassion for human suffering.
4. Artists need to acquire a deep understanding of their craft, and a sufficiently high level of skill to enable them to work effectively to commission with an almost unconscious fluency.
5. Artists are called to creativity, in the likeness of their own Creator. Authentic originality in a work of art is not absolute: it derives from the artist's submission to objective values beyond the individual self.
6. Artists belong to a tradition, which is the handing-on of the knowledge and positive experience of the past. Respect for tradition is concretely expressed by apprenticeship to the great artists of the past ('masters'), in order, through humility and training, to achieve mastery in turn. For some this will mean continuing to work in their own unique way within established and prescribed sacred forms; for others it will lead to the creation of new and previously unimagined styles.
7. Provided they share a belief in the objectivity of truth, goodness and beauty, and are well disposed to the above principles, our Academy will admit students of any religious faith or none. Since we hold that the good artist must look beyond the individual self for inspiration, we will encourage them to develop a living relationship with the Source of life. We will support our students in their religious search as well as their artistic training.