Recent observations about my own process of making art,pt II
In my post a few days ago about observations of my own process of making art, I noted that it had been 3+ years since I had painted icons. I also noted that while I was not painting icons during that time, I was making quite a bit of art. Much of the art that I was doing was drawing. Taking time away from the icons to draw and focus on other forms of art while my soul healed from the destruction which happened in 2014 did much to strengthen an area of art which was once my greatest weakness: drawing.
There are many people who will question this statement and ask how drawing was my weakness, especially in light of the fact that I loved to draw when I was a young boy. Indeed in school my notebooks would often be filled with drawings of battleship war scenes, airplanes and cars instead of the notes that I was taking in class. Even when I was taking notes in class there would be doodling all
over the pages. However, this ceased about 3rd grade when my dad went through my school notes and saw that I was not paying attention in class and still pulling a b average. How dare I go to an expensive Catholic school and not pay attention in class? And so my parents cracked down on my study habits and helped form a mental block in my mind about drawing that lasted until the spring of 2015. What had once been my great love had become something that was rather difficult for me and often emotionally draining. Drawing the pattern was often the most difficult part of drawing and painting the icon.
In 2010 the Archbishop of Pittsburgh and the Diocese of Western Pennsylvania Melchisedek invited me to travel to California to meet then monk, now Hieromonk Patrick Doolan, a student of Leonid Ouspensky and an old friend of His Eminence. I had long been familiar with the work of Hieromonk Patrick due to my teacher introducing me to his book which was initially only available in French, but later in English. My teacher Peter was fascinated with the work of Leonid Ouspensky and his colleague The Monk Gregory Krug, and so when the book about Ouspensky’s work written by Hieromonk Patrick came out in French Peter bought it and encouraged his students to buy it as well, for the simple reason of looking at the photos of Ouspensky’s work.
I made arrangements for a trip to Northern California to meet Hieromonk Patrick as well as do a few other things while in California and was not sure what to expect when I met this iconographer whose work I had respected for years. When we met he asked to see some of my work, which I was very shy to show him. Hieromonk Patrick is one of the best iconographers alive in the Western Hemisphere. His response was “Michael, I am not an expert. I am a student, just like you. We are all students”. I showed him my work and he told me about how as a young man in his 20s he would fly all the way to Paris just to have his teacher evaluate his work, something his friends thought was strange. The only advice he gave me that day was that he wanted me to begin drawing. I asked him what he wanted me to draw, fully expecting him to reply icon patterns, but his response was that it mattered little to him what I drew, he just wanted me to draw and draw as much as I could.
It took me five years to take Hieromonk Patrick up on his advice. It was not until the morning in spring 2015 while healing from my first concussion that I woke up with an incredible desire to draw that I started drawing again. Discussing my newfound love of drawing or lack of fear of drawing with my friends and fellow artists the only thing we could come up with to explain the happening was that my brain in the process of healing from the concussion had circumvented the mental block I had toward drawing in order to help me get back to being a productive artist. And so I began to draw quite a bit. Figure studies, cartoons, abstract line drawings, you name it, I was drawing it. When I came to the point in the divorce where I did not feel I could paint icons any longer I continued to draw.
I did not realize that what Hieromonk Patrick was telling me was one of the most valuable art lessons which I have ever received until I resumed painting icons last month. It was only when I sat down to draw the patterns for the icons of St. Francis and Clare and saw how quickly and easily I created them that I realized that even though I had not been painting for the past few years, all of the drawing which I had been doing had an enormous impact on my skills as an iconographer. And so I encourage you, even if you find yourself in a place where you feel that your current work needs a rest, never stop being creative. Never stop sharpening your skills. Never give up. Focusing on other areas of work while you work through whatever it is that is making your art a struggle can only help to sharpen your skills as an artist once you resume your primary art. As the book “Art and Fear” so eloquently puts it, the only difference between an artist and a former artist is the artist continued to work through his/her struggles when a difficulty appeared whereas the former artist ran into the difficulty and quit making art.
