A dose of humility
I am sharing this story in hopes that someone will gleam some insight from it and may spare themselves the emotional, spiritual and artistic hell which I put myself through for a number of years. Maybe you can learn from my foolishness!
About 7 or 8 years ago I still had the desire to paint icons in churches. This would have been 2011 or 2012 and at that time I had been painting icons since 1996, so about 15–16 years. I had been teaching my student since 2007 and she had become a good iconographer in her own right. I had a strong desire to move from painting personal panel sized icons to wall sized work. However, I had not yet done anything larger than the Saints of Africa which is 52x38 inches and the large St. Michael which I painted on a 48x24 inch stretched canvas. I had also painted (3) 48x36 icons of St. George, St. Demetrios and Christ Let the Little Children Come to Me, which are on 1 1/2 inch thick birch panels which are in St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in New Ken. Upon discussing my desires with a friend I came up with a plan which I thought would move me in the direction that I wanted to be in.
The Orthodox Church that my now ex-wife and I had been attending in Pittsburgh had no icons on the walls of the Church. There is an iconostasis, but nothing on the walls. I proposed to the priest that the church let me donate the time to paint the icons for the walls with the only cost to the church being the supplies needed. This would solve 2 problems: the church not having icons on the walls and my wanting practice painting very large icons. The plan would save the parish a ton of money as much of the cost of having icons painted is paid for in the time and skill of the artist painting the icons. The priest liked the idea and set up a committee of he, myself, the associate priest and parish council president to discuss the proposal. In preparation I did some mock ups of what the church could look like with icons on the walls.
The committee which was formed agreed to my proposal and forwarded the proposal to a parish council meeting for parish approval. This meeting was held a few weeks later after Divine Liturgy and the meeting did not go well at all. In order to explain what happened that day, I must first state there is a commonly held fallacy among Orthodox Christians that iconographers are supposed to be “as holy as a monk”. I have written about this idea many times, but on this day the fallacy reared its ugly head. After I had given the presentation on my proposal the floor was opened up for questions. The first few questions were innocent enough, although it was clear there were those in the parish who were opposed to the idea due to their not approving of change. However it was when a man by the name of A.T. stood up that things got ugly. He immediately began to tear into my character as a person and question whether or not I should be painting icons at all. The tone of his voice was accusatory, inflammatory, and down right hostile. His line of attack went on for a few minutes while people in the parish asked the Parish Council President to silence the young man, which he finally did. By the time it was all over I had voluntarily rescinded my offer for the project and left the parish hall in shame. I was in utter shock over what had just happened. I immediately left the hall in a complete and utter meltdown and would not speak to anyone from the parish after it happened. It was not pretty. The result of this day was not only was the project not begun, but my now ex-wife/student and I never returned to that parish again and the next week changed where we go to church.
This parish meeting began a series of events in my life which unfolded and finally led to my walking away from painting icons due to a spiritual and personal crisis. The crisis became so intense that by 2016 I could no longer bring myself to paint icons at all. During this time of not painting icons, when I was adamantly telling the world that I was forever done with icon painting, I did not go without producing art. I am an artist. Artists must produce art. It is in our DNA to do so. I spent the time doing figure drawing, drawing cartoons, doing abstract drawings and abstract paintings. It was during this time that I actually took the advice of the Hieromonk Patrick to strengthen my drawing skills to heart and did much drawing. This time was not wasted artistically, it just was not spent painting icons. Throughout this period my good friends kept gently encouraging me to go back to painting icons, but did so in a way that was respectful of where I was emotionally and spiritually and without putting any demands or pressure on me. Rhoda, one of the most supportive of my artist friends kept saying to me “Mike, I can’t wait to see what your work looks like once you start painting icons again!”
Some time in the middle of July I finally decided that it was time to let the past be the past and return to my work in iconography. I had 4 half-painted icons which needed completed. Two of those half painted icons were part of a commission from 2015 which still needed 4 icons left to be painted, including those two. At first it was painful to begin painting again and it took a bit of work to remember what I had not done in years. But soon the growing pain turned to joy as I began to remember just how much I love to paint icons. Very quickly into the process of beginning to work in icon painting again it became clear that the increase in my drawing skills over the past few years was going to greatly effect the quality and nature of my work. In the past month and a half I have completed 8 icons total. Four of these icons were started from a blank panel and needed drawn. I noticed as I started with the first two icons which needed to be drawn, Ss. Fancis of Assisi and Claire for a Catholic client of mine, just how easy it actually was for me to draw them. This was in complete contrast with the past where drawing icon patterns was always my weakness. This ease in drawing followed through to my next two icon projects: St. Brendan the Navigator and St. Declan.
The real insight came however when I was drawing my current project St. Dionysius the Aeropigate last weekend. As I was drawing his icon, which again was not difficult for me to draw, I thought to myself “you know, I could not have easily done the large scale drawings for the icon project at the church that I proposed years ago with much ease. I clearly was not ready for that project.” And that is when I heard the still small voice of God whisper in my ear “Michael, I love you. You thought that A.T. was attacking you that day in order to disgrace you. No, I was using him to protect you from biting off more than you could chew at the time, and I saved you from total embarrassment.” It was like a Saint Paul moment where he was knocked off the horse and the scales fell from his eyes allowing him to see how he had disgraced Christ. God in his mercy allowed me to see that even though I had nearly stopped practicing my faith and the painting of icons which is the manifestation of my faith and my skills as an artist in the years after this incident, that I was forgiven for my foolishness and that he was pleased that I had returned to my love of icon painting. Glory to God in the Highest!
