O Glorious Lady, Throned In Rest

 'O glorious Lady, throned in rest, amid the starry host above, who offered nurture from your breast to God, with pure maternal love.'

This the first stanza of a hymn text by the 19th century English divine, John Mason Neale, an Anglican scholar and hymnographer and contemporary of Saint John Henry Newman.  Like Newman, Neale was part of the Oxford movement and had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Unlike Newman, in the end, Neale never undertook the ultimate step of becoming a Roman Catholic.  

In Morning Prayer this morning for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - a Marian dogma confirmed by another contemporary of Neale's, Pope Pius IX in 1854 - I came across this beautiful hymn to the Blessed Mother, entitled: "O Glorious Lady Throned in Rest" sung by Kathleen Lindquist in an album entitled : "Hymns and Chants of the Divine Office, Vol.1"

All of which coincides nicely with the Virgo Lactans or Nursing Mother of God icon* I've started working on as a way of meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation during Advent and Christmas.  How Mary could give birth to God, much less nourish and nurture her Creator from her own body is a lot to reflect on, which I do better with a brush in my hand. 

*In the Christian East icons of this type had the title of Galaktotrophousa in Greek and Mlekopitatelnitza in Slavonic. 

At Last!

 Back on February 17th  I completed the drawing for what I thought was going to be my next icon - a triptych of the Mother of God of the Burning Bush (or the Unburnt Bush) with flanking figures of the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Isaiah for the prayer corner of the little oratory in my studio.   

My plan was to pray and meditate on the theophany at Sinai during Lent when Roman Catholics read and ponder the Book of Exodus.  

It was a great plan, except that my Lent this year started on the 24th of February when I discovered that I couldn't move without being in terrific pain and ended up going down to Seattle for back surgery (I'm doing much, much better, thank you!) and a long recuperation.  

As October begins and the year is almost over, I'm grateful to say that this icon is finally underway.  This afternoon I finished applying the red ochre trace lines and shadows on each of the figures and backgrounds.  

If you are interested, please  join me as I post from time to time on this new project. 

Paint Bigger

 One of the ironies of growing older as an artist is this: as one finally has more available time to devote to art, one's capacity inexorably diminishes with age.  In my case, I've noticed that its gotten harder and harder to focus on smallish details in a drawing or painting. 

Hence the visor, complete with interchangeable lenses and headlamp that I find necessary whenever painting most icons nowadays. 

It's really just a minor inconvenience (at least in the studio I don't have to wear a facemark- another minor inconvenience).   I'm grateful too that my hands continue to remain steady (if I don't drink too much tea!)  and with sufficient light and the additional magnification, I'm able to see well enough to continue drawing and painting. 

I'm reminded of my visit in 1985 to Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York where I met the master iconographer Fr. Kyprian, who at that time was in his 90's.  He was in his studio up on a high ladder working an enormous icon of the Mother of God and Jesus, wearing a paint-splattered apron and a pair of glasses with thick lenses.  

When we were introduced, he graciously welcomed me, noticing that I was somewhat astounded by someone as old and frail as he was clambering up and down a tall ladder.  Nodding towards the ladder and the mural sized icon behind him, he laughed and made the comment that as his eyesight worsened, his solution was to simply paint bigger. 

Not a bad approach to age and art. 

"Windows Into Heaven" Solo Exhibit Held Over

The Alaska State Museum has decided to hold over my Solo Exhibit "Windows Into Heaven" for an additional two weeks: the final day will be April 28th.

If you are visiting Juneau before then (or live here and haven't had a chance to come by and see the exhibit), please come by before it closes and take a look.

"Windows Into Heaven"

Its been a little over a month since the solo exhibit of my work as an iconographer opened at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau.  For the past year or so I've been preoccupied with the (seemingly) endless details of putting together a retrospective exhibit of the work I've done as an iconographer over the past thirty-eight years. (Hence the neglect of this blog!)

It turned out not to be straightforward at all, especially for someone with so little experience with actually exhibiting my art work in a gallery, much less the state museum!  It all came right in the end, thanks to the generosity of the churches and individuals that lent the museum work of mine that they own.  Thank you!

Fortunately, two of the museum curators, Jackie Manning and Aaron Elmore, kindly guided me through the process and provided their invaluable (and much needed expertise!) in every aspect of mounting the exhibit.  I'm grateful as well to Bob Banghart, the retired director of the state museum drew on his long experience as a curator to help me solve what appeared at the time to be several intractable problems.

Below is the link to a virtual tour of the exhibit.  It is a slideshow that begins with my artist's statement and slides in order of the all of the pieces displayed in the exhibit.  Each slide has a photograph of the artwork with the exhibit label next to it.

UPDATE
You may have experienced opening the video yesterday and today.  However, the problem has been fixed and its now opening without any problems.  Thank you to everyone who contacted me to let me know about this!

Getting Each Step Right

Top Left: Archangel Gabriel (Annunciation); Bottom Left:St.Jean d'Arc; Center: Elousa Mother of God; Top Right: Mary, Mother of God; Bottom Left: St. Mary of Egypt

I've begun work on a tryptich which will eventually end up in the prayer corner of my studio. I did the cartoon back in October 2016, then put it aside as my Dad went into his final illness.  Almost a year later, I'm ready to begin the next stage of the work.  So this past weekend I cut the panels for the center and the wings.  And although the panels are cut, I'm a long way from being ready to begin painting.

Which is alright.

One of the life lessons I've learned from icon painting is the importance of every step of the process.  Historically and to the present day, icons are painted either as wall murals in buon fresco, secco (egg tempera on plaster) or mosaic or as portable panels in egg tempera, acrylic, encaustic, mosaic, cast metal or carved in wood or ivory in bas relief.  In every case, regardless of media, a lot of preparation and preliminary work is required just to get to the start line.

I've learned the hard way, that any rush to get to the "good parts" (the aspect of the work that is gratifyingly self-expressive) in icon painting is a mistake.  Although I try to work efficiently , there are no shortcuts.  Even those stages of the work that are tedious or boring (which I am tempted at times to regard as taking up time that could be given over to more creative activity) , are not a diversion but essential.

Essential not only in a practical, material sense -- a smooth polished gessoed surface on a panel is essential for gilding and painting -- but essential in a spiritual sense as well.  If. as has been my experience, every icon is a prayer made visible, every stage of the work is an offering of one's self and one's work to God.  The loving attention to detail, concentration and hard work to get each aspect of the work as close to perfect as one can manage, if done with the right intention, gives glory to God.

Which true, not only in the studio, but in the mundane but essential tasks of marriage, parenthood, work and prayer.    

 

Mary, Mother of Mercy, Pray for Them!

Ravensburger Schultzmantel Madonna

I'm beginning my fourth and final week teaching in the studio (and on retreat) while taking annual leave from my regular job at the Diocese of Juneau.  It is always a welcome opportunity to quiet down, reflect and pray.   I've been particularly praying for  refugees,(who are fleeing either political or sectarian violence and war) and migrants, who are trying to escape poverty, drought, crop failure and famine.

Its hard for me to understand the difference.  On one side of my family, my Alsatian ancestors were refugees, forced out of Alsace after the German defeat of France in 1870.   My Irish immigrant economic migrants, trying to survive the very real threat of starvation during the Great Hunger and hoping for a better life.  Both families made the perilous journey by sea to America and found asylum  (if not, in the case of the Irish, welcome) in the New World.

This past week, more than 20,000 migrants from Africa and Asia were rescued attempting to cross from North Africa to Europe without authorization (legal immigration is closed.  They are desperate and vulnerable and the traffickers who prey on them are unscrupulous and greedy, packing them by the thousands in unseaworthy ships and  rubber rafts.  Over 5,000 drowned in 2016 and 1,985 to date in 2017 when their boats were swamped or capsized.

It is a humanitarian and human tragedy that will only get worse, in a world in which 65.3 million people are refugees.

As I've noted in earlier posts, I pray better with a pencil or a brush in my hand, and as I was praying for those desperate people in peril in the Mediterranean and those rescuing them, the image of Mary the Mother of Mercy came into my mind.  Made popular by the mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, the Mother of Mercy is depicted extending her cloak over those seeking her protection and prayers.  There are many, many variations.  The Ravensburger Schultzmantel Madonna is a well-known example.
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And thus, this initial drawing for an icon of Mary, Mother of Mercy, Mother of Refugees and Migrants.  

Mary, Mother of Mercy, extend your protective mantle over refugees and migrants everywhere, especially those in peril on the sea!

The Brilliance of Eternal Values

"By using [the perspective of importance], Byzantine painting accentuated the holiness of the persons represented.  Their individual and temporal aspects were thus clothed by the brilliance of eternal values, and the image itself receives a function other than that of a simple drawing.

The way that an icon grasps, understands, and draws its subject cannot be based just on physical vision but must be interpreted by thought.  In the same way, its optical effect undergoes a change; by enlarging the proportions, the main person seems to move out from the interior of the icon toward the spectator.  The focus is thus inversed.

Pere Egon Sendler SJ. 'The Icon: Image of the Invisible

 

For an iconpainter, the representational conventions of Byzantine painting are so familiar  that it is easy (at least for me) to lose sight of how peculiar those conventions are that depict the human form in space.   I've been sketching out the cartoon for an icon of St. Anne, with her daughter, Mary, the Mother of God and Mary's son, Jesus.  I first encountered this image of mother, daughter and son in the work of my teacher, Pere Igor (Egon) Sendler, in the photograph of a fresco he painted in the 1980's.  As in many icons, Mary is depicted both as the Mother of God (that is to say, as an adult woman with her son, Jesus), and as the youthful daughter of St. Anne, symbolized by her diminutive stature in comparison with her mother.  

Which is a reminder for me of two things.  First, that drawing is always a way of seeing and thinking about the visible and invisible realities that we seek to perceive, comprehend and depict.  Second, that when it comes to what Pere Igor speaks of as those realities that are "clothed by the brilliance of eternal values", our ordinary, natural ways of sight and perception are inadequate to fully represent the subtle and elusive mystery of a world tranfigured by divine Grace.  Paradoxically, the more painstaking the attempt to enclose such realities in the garb of naturalistic realism, their luminous brilliance simply fades from sight.  

Thinking with a Compass and Straightedge

I wouldn't say geometry was my best subject in high school, but it was certainly the most appealing!  Not the axioms and proofs but the fact that geometry required putting pencil to paper and drawing!  Imagine my astonishment (and delight) twenty-five years ago when I discovered via Pere Igor Sendler's book, "The Icon: Image of the Invisible" chapter after chapter on proportions and the underlying geometry of icons!

For iconographers probably the most useful aspects of geometry and proportions is gaining the almost miraculous ability (using only proportions and simple multiplication and division) to make a drawing larger (or smaller). And, by establishing a set of proportional relationships, based on the proportions of the panel (or wall) that serves as the support for the icon, being able to construct the figures within the icon.

Although I'm behind on the studio - mea culpa! - I've taken the first steps in designing a new work for the upcoming solo exhibit at the state museum (the first of  several icons that I hope to complete in time for that exhibition.)  The starting place is thinking through, with a compass and straightedge, the proportions and proportional relationships of a triptych icon (a central image with two hinged panels that are half the width of the main image.) 

Having laid the foundation, I'll be putting it aside to complete the icons that I have promised those who have commissioned them.  Thank you for your patient forebearance!   

   

Vita Brevis, Ars Longa

Choosing to be undistracted by the candidate debate tonight and the impending presidential election, I am posting, as promised a week ago, the remaining portfolio slides that I submitted to the Alaska State Museum in my (successful) application for a solo exhibit in 2017/2018.

The Conception of Mary the Mother of God

The Risen Jesus and St. Mary Magdalene at the Empty Tomb

St. Justin Martyr with Scenes from His Life

The Holy Face (Icon of Christ-Made-Without-Hands)

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Much Thanks!

I'm grateful for all of the kind words and congratulations I have received on the occasion of being selected (along with seven other Alaskan artists)for a solo exhibit at the Alaska State Museum.  Thank you!  

A special word of thanks to Beth, Henry and Tom Melville, who resized the electronic files of the slides I submitted for my solo show application.  I know that without their help I'd have stalled out on this application, since moving  pixels around is as incomprehensible (for me) as quantum physics.  So, as in so many things, I relied on the kindness of friends.  Thank you! 

Below are the first five of the ten works that I submitted in my application. (I'll post the rest tomorrow.)

 

 

 

 

 

Solo Exhibit Artists Chosen

 

I received the news this afternoon that I'm one of eight Alaskan artists selected by the Alaska State Museum for a solo exhibit sometime in 2017/2018.  No other details yet -- who the other artists are, for example, but I'm sure I'll learn more soon.

In the meantime I'm honored and humbled that my work has been chosen.

The Icon and the Belt-Sander

The Centre d'Etudes Russes, Meudon 

Twenty-three years ago this week, my wife Paula and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in        Paris at the Centre d'Etudes Russes .  We were there with four friends and students from the Mt.Angel Iconography Institute.  We were there to study with Fr.Egon Sendler SJ (Pere Igor) as students in his basic course.

What a remarkable time that was!  Pere Igor's wisdom, enthusiasm and joy was inspiring,  I learned so much from him each day in the old German barracks (erected during the Occupation ) he'd converted into a classroom and a studio.  I chose the icon of St.Elijah ascending to heaven as the image I would paint.  He would, typically, inspect my drawing, pronounce it "Marvellous! " or Terrific!" And then proceed to erase half the drawing.  Usually he said very little to me, except a few imperatives such as "Simplify!" "Find the essential form!"  

When, after two weeks of diligent work, I completed the icon, he singled it out for effusive praise.  He held it up before the class and commented that he was a mere artisan, but that I was a true artist!  Then he declared in a very lighthearted and comical tone, that the only thing necessary to make it perfect was a belt-sander!  As you might have expected, this got a big laugh from the class.

While I hadn't really taken his artisan/artist comment seriously at all, I was perplexed and hurt (crushed, if truth be told) that he would say, even in jest, that a belt-sander would improve an icon I'd spent so much time and effort bringing to completion.  And which, in my (unspokem) estimation, surpassed the work of anyone else in the class, including, (I'm embarassed to admit) even the work of my master, Pere Igor.

I realized that shrewd spiritual father that he was, he had intuitively grasped my secret sin (hidden, if not from him and my fellow students, then from myself.)  That sin was pride, of course, pride in my ability as an artisit, by which I sought to prove to God (and anyone else who might be interested ) that  I was a worthy person deserving of admiration and praise.

It wasn't the icon that required the belt-sander,  it was me!  The carapace of pride, which was hardening around my heart, needed to be humbled, to be scraped away.  I realized that whatever I managed to accomplish as an iconpainter was nothing , rubbish, actually, to quote St.Paul, compared the icon God had created me to be, being brought to perfect (still a daily struggle) by Christ Jesus.

Which is the only icon that for iconpainters (and everyone else) matters in the end.

Why I Always Use Red Bole

It turns out that burnished water gilding, that is applying gold leaf to a bole ground and then polishing it with an agate (or a dog's tooth) burnisher until it shines, is actually easier than you'd think it would be.  The secret is to apply a thin coat of gilder's clay mixed with size to the gesso, sand and polish it, and apply the gold leaf.  Piece of cake --  sort of -- as long as everything goes exactly right.  But if the clay/glue ratio is off, or its too dry or too humid, or there is unusual solar flare activity, forget about it going as planned.

But lately I've been able to manage to get pretty good results gilding and burnishing haloes.  Not bad for 35 years of effort!  Pretty OK.   Not perfect-the gilding is NEVER perfect, there's inevitably a flaw, a fault, a thin spot or a pinhole if you look carefully enough, which why bole is usually red. (The red makes the faults disappear.)

Seems to me an apt, if homely metaphor for grace .  The color is wrong, of course -  it is our sins that are like scarlet, not grace, but isn't it grace that covers over our faults, failings and sins and makes them disappear?

Natural Icons

Today is the last day of summer -- fall officially begins tomorrow with the equinox, but summer ended last week in Douglas when it began to rain (so far, without letup). My studio has a metal roof so that the drimbeat of rain is a constant rhythm when I am out there.
I am grateful for that reminder of the natural world when I pray and work there (grateful as I am to be in a dry and warm studio!). For the same reason I keep objects like rocks and shells and fossils in my little prayer corner, alongside the icons and prayerbooks. I like to keep before me a visible reminder of the infinitely varied, intricate and ancient order of creation ( a kind of natural icon) A densely black piece of shale picked up on the rocky beach, which may be 300 million years old helps me to remember and appreciate the immensity of geological time, measured in millions of years and my own, our own brief time in life, measured in decades, days and minutes.

God is beyond and behind time, yet i marvel that God invites me, invites us, to participate in his own eternal life (which is beyond comprehension) except with a loving, grateful heart, which, he generously provides and offers us.

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Seeing and Hearing



Pope Francis

I wonder if the most significant and memorable event of the Year of Faith (which draws to a close on November 24^th ), might have been the day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria and the Middle East this past Saturday.  With only a week’s notice, Pope Francis directed the entire Church (all 1.2 billion of us), to pray for peaceful and non-violent resolution of the civil war in Syria, which has already claimed 100,000 lives and forced an estimated 2 million refugees to flee the country. 

In calling for this day of prayer and fasting, Pope Francis condemned the use of chemical weapons and their possession, cautioned against any escalation of the violence or widening of the war and called for a ceasefire and urged all parties to seek a political and not a military solution to the crisis. 
 
None of which is unexpected coming from the Vatican.  The Holy See (and by extension, the Catholic Church) can be relied upon to always recommend  peaceful rather than a violent solutions to international conflicts and disputes.    
But in his call to prayer and fasting, Pope Francis spoke of the moral duty of every person of good will to pursue peace.  In his announcement, he wrote:

“All men and women of good will are bound by the task of pursing peace.  I make a forceful and urgent call to the entire Catholic Church, and also to every Christian or other confessions, as well as to the followers of every religion and to those brothers and sisters who do not believe: peace is a good which overcomes every barrier, because it belongs to all of humanity.”

He went onto say: “ I repeat forcefully: it is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict that builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.  May the plea for peace rise up and touch the heart of everyone so they may lay down their weapons and let themselves be led by the desire for peace.”

But then, building on the foundation of a shared humanity and our ability using reason to arrive at natural truth (in this case, that we bound as human beings to pursue peace in every situation, he became a powerful evangelist.

 

Into the despair and hopelessness of the present war in Syria, at a time when the threat of wider, even more violent and intractable war threatens, the Holy Father proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer.  Why?  Because, as he wrotes, “ Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace.” 

 

He wanted us as a Church, as disciples and witnesses of Jesus, the Prince of Peace and the Light of the world, and praying for the intercession of his Mother, the Queen of Peace, to gather publicly in prayer and in a spirit of penance to invoke “God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world.” 

 

September 7^th was a powerful act of witness to Jesus Christ and to the way of life that he calls us to live as his disciples.  On our knees we asked God to convert and to change our hearts and the hearts of all those who have taken up arms and we appealed in prayer for all those in need and for an increase in our own love and care for the poor and the dispossessed of Syria and the Middle East.

 At the same time, by gathering to pray, we were, despite our own frailty and sinfulness, witnesses to the transforming and incandescent love of God, revealed most fully and perfectly in the Person of Jesus, which illumines the darkness of sin, suffering and death.  His light, his truth, his peace and his love, embodied and incarnated in the earthen vessels of Christians and all those who seek dialogue, reconciliation and peace, are a shining beacon of hope for those who are hopeless and cynical and in despair.

 Let us entrust ourselves and each other to our loving God, for whom nothing is impossible, and may the peaceful witness of our lives invite all men and women to faith in Christ, our Savior and our Hope.

 

 

Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for Syria, pray for us.

 (The detail of the face of Christ is from an icon by the 20th century Russian iconographer, Leonid Ouspenski.  The icon of Mary is the Syrian icon of Our Lady of Saidnaya.)

 

 

 

 

      

 

     

Only Love is Creative

So much of iconpainting is (literally) waiting for paint (or bole or varnish) to dry. Which is what I spent most of last evening doing as I completed the icon of Our Lady Queen of Peace. Just in time to put out for veneration at the Cathedral in Juneau for tomorrow's Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace in Syria and the Middle East.

It's impossible to grasp exactly all that is at stake in our President's apparent decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war or to predict what sort of new world we may all be living a week or a month or a year from now. But the necessity to ask the Lord to " convert the hearts of all who have taken up arms" seems more urgent than ever.
The truth is, to quote (inexactly) Pope Francis, there are no violent solutions. Violence, as we have seen at every turn in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and now Syria, begets suspicion, fear, distrust, wrath, hatred, a desire for revenge and more violence.
A mother and a child. Powerless against the powerful and their armies and weapons. So true, yet, their embrace is both a sign and the embodied reality of love. About which another Pope, Blessed John Paul II famously said: ' Only love is creative.'
The love of this Mother and Holy Child is the lifegiving love of the Blessed Trinity that holds humanity, our world and the entire cosmos in being. Jesus, God's love Incarnate, depicted in the icon as a weak and vulnerable child tenderly embracing his loving mother, on the Cross overcame forever the powers of sin and death.
Tomorrow we will unite ourselves in prayer and fasting to the Divine Love, which overthrows the powerful, disarms the violent and raises up the lowly. May God strengthen us to persevere in prayer for the beloved people of Syria.

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Mary, Queen of Peace, Pray for Us!

Pope Francis this morning (Rome time) spoke of his deep distress at the escalating violence (especially the alleged use of nerve agents by the Syrian govenment to kill hundreds and possibly thousands of innocent civilians ). He argued for the urgency of a negotiated settlement to the conflict and for outside nations to avoid intervening in the civil war. He called on all Catholics to undertake a day of fasting and prayer on Saturday, September 7th for peace in Syria and the Middle East, noting that this day is the eve of the feast of the birth of Mary, the Mother of God, the Queen of Peace.
He invited Christians of all denominations, as well as believers of other faiths to fast and pray for peace in Syria on that day as well. I welcome his call to be in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters subject to the scourge of war and its attendent disasters, to pray for them and to pray for peace.

Juneau, Alaska is a world away from Syria and the Middle East, but this afternoon following Mass at the Shrine of St.Therese, this group of Armenian pilgrims from California gathered in the chapel to sing the Lord's Prayer and to pray, which they did in the beautiful chant of the Armenian liturgy. They had heard of the Holy Father's call for prayer and fasting for peace in Syria and they shared with us that some of them were originally from Syria (where there are Armenian communities) or had family members living in Syria. Afterwards, they invited our Bishop, Edward Burns and me to join them for a group photo.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have been with these pilgrims as they prayed the prayer Jesus taught us. We are in the midst of a deepening crisis for all of the people of the Middle East but especially for the ancient Christian communities there who are faced with grave threats to their continued survival in their countries of origin.
May our prayers be joined to theirs and to those of all people of faith and goodwill to deliver the people of Syria and the region from the evil of war.

Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!

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