There is a spectacle that happens when an iconography workshop is coming to a close and everyone stands back to look at their own icon or to walk around the room to look at others’ icons. No one says, “Wow, I did a great job," or “Yours is better than mine.” Instead, the two phrases heard over and over again are: “Wow, how did this happen!” and “Wow, they all look so different!”
Iconography is not about taking control and creating something that is not there. It’s about letting go and seeing what is there. Even though we all write the same icon and follow the same steps, somehow each icon is very different.
“Every icon is a surprise,” our instructor (who has been writing icons for 23 years) said. There is no iconographer who can say they would not have done something differently if given the chance – but that is looking backward. We accept what is, and by doing so we accept where we are in our individual spiritual journey.
If we struggled with one particular stage of the process, then that struggle helps us identify particular problems in our own spiritual journey. For example, trouble with drawing straight and trouble free lines could indicate a struggle with creating order in one’s life. Conversely, if the lines are too harsh, perhaps it’s time to loosen up a bit in daily life.
From the first day I felt intrigued by the infant’s hand that clasped at its mother’s headdress. I felt intrigued because, as I said at the time, “that’s what babies really do.” But I also know that ‘the pull’ doesn’t end with infancy.
Our instructor had a different take on that tiny hand: she said that the Divine is always trying to engage us, always drawing us into the realm, always tugging at us . . .
Many Iconographers of old did not sign their work, and those few who did, have done so on the backside of the panel. We use a phrase, written in Greek letters, which means through the hands of . . .
When we inscribe through the hands of . . ., we are not saying, “I did this icon.” We are saying, “I accept this icon.”
I don’t think a person can possibly extract as much intimacy with an image they’ve stared at daily as from one they’ve spent a week in creating through their own hand by brush, eye, intent, and contemplation . . . that is the magic of iconography.
I’ve intimately witnessed this image emerge from a blank board. At one point, deep in contemplation about the curve of a fingernail, I thought of the old tradition given to women to wash the deceased’s body – to handle and cleanse, to understand and know, and to dress and groom the body of one no longer able to speak. These women must have learned more about that life when it was gone than they had ever known about it in waking – an intimacy beyond words. I thought of this while washing and brushing my image – witnessing its ‘life.’
This was the tiniest stroke of paint that wasn’t even difficult to do – and my image seemed to take on a life of its own – “just the thing it needed,” I said to myself. My image was suddenly alive!
As I made those sacred lines I thought about the Pinocchio story in which a puppet made of wood and string and cloth is suddenly given the spark of life to become “real.” A real little boy, he is called henceforth. What is it that makes life? It’s a spark, something beyond us.
The mouths of icon figures are intentionally made small in proportion to the rest of the face. That is because icons are silent. Their wisdom is beyond words. The icon speaks to us through light. Therefore, the eyes are proportionately large – because it is universally accepted that the eyes are windows to the soul. Icons are frequently referred to as “windows” – as in, the gateway to a world beyond our human understanding.
The blank gesso board represents inner silence, emptiness, and potential. It is white and empty, and yet it paradoxically contains all colors. On this emptiness we place pigments made of natural earth elements. Natural pigments have crystals which give off light. Prismatic facets catch light, just as the soul gathers experience and reflects facets of itself into the world. Synthetic pigments cannot do this. With the application of color, we 'open' the light within the gesso board.
Tempera painting is the earliest type of painting known to man. The wall paintings of ancient Egypt and Babylon are tempera, as are many of the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and many others. The pigments are collected from nature: earth, plants, minerals, and even insects. These pigments are mixed with the contents of an egg yolk sac, the symbol for life and creation. Our pigments for the class had already been gathered and neatly processed into powders for our convenience, though a fellow student brought many cartons of eggs from her backyard chickens for the mixing of our paints.
Writing lines around the eyes and lips and other facial features is about establishing order. Once order is established and color is applied, then light can 'pour' into the icon.
The practice of “praying with icons” is not a matter of standing or kneeling before it and speaking a rehearsed set of words. The practice involves attendance – that is, attendance – simply being before the icon and allowing it to speak to us. The icon is there to quiet and calm the mind, to bring stillness into everyday life. Often in stillness, words come . . .
When I was in Russia five years ago, I saw more icons than I could appreciate or comprehend. Many which I saw, I'm sure, were written by the famous Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev from the 14th century. Unfortunately I had no understanding of iconography or of Andrei Rublev at the time, and so I most likely passed right by those treasures without knowing -- but I will always remember the overwhelming stillness of those vast rooms.
Icons move from emptiness to fullness, always building from dark to light, and never descending from light to dark. We are separating darkness from light. This represents consciousness, understanding, self knowledge, and inner light becoming manifest.
Icons always look forward in hope. Likewise, if we make a mistake, instead of spending time trying to correct it (which is going backwards), we must trust in the ability to transfigure it. In other words, there’s always another chance “to make things right.”
The purpose of the icon is to reveal what is already there, not to create a beautiful painting. I think of the quote by Michaelangelo who insists, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” He worked on the premise of revelation, not invention.
There are two illnesses among iconographers, according to our instructor. The first is perfectionism: getting absorbed in correcting small details, trying to be better than we are. This is an illness of the ego. The aim here is to suspend the ego, to be exactly what we are.
The second illness is that of disorderliness: a complete absence of structure, unconscious movement, reactivity, the refusal to follow rules. Icon writing is a symbolic art, so every movement is laden with meaning. One must be aware and conscious of every movement of the hand and brush.
Perfectionism is apparent among most of us in attendance – a line gone wrong quickly evokes the muffled or clear sounds of disappointment and self-reproach. Emotions come to the surface as several people suddenly remember and recount the reprimands they had received as young children in art class. Our group of 15 includes two retired neurosurgeons. I found it interesting that both these men accepted apparent errors with quietude and often smiles.
None of us can ever be perfect. It is hubris to even think that our work will be perfect no matter how long we practice. Writing the icon is about accepting exactly who are, right now, and moving from there.
Although iconography is about following the rules and aligning the ego with a greater truth, the paradox (one of many) is that following the law perfectly does not produce perfection! Laws and rules cannot heal human life, our instructor reminds us repeatedly. Only light and grace can heal.
Chaos will never be overcome. That is a truth. We strive continuously to bring order and understanding to chaos – but it will never be overcome.
That is why the halo goes beyond the border of the recessed center of the gesso board – to remind us that, although universal truths are well-ordered and dependable, disorder and chaos will always be in the wings. That does not mean that chaos will prevail – unless we allow it to – it means that chaos will always be there. Iconography is about bringing order out of chaos.
In the Tenderness Icon, Mary inclines her head to the child and the child presses his face against the cheek of his mother. My favorite part of this icon is the way the tiny hand clasps the headdress of his mother. Someone asked me why, and I said, “Because that’s what babies really do.”
There was a discussion about the way the mother looks somewhat sorrowful, as though she knows what is going to happen to her child. I also note that the child looks compassionately at his mother, as though he knows what his mother must face. When I think of young men who have died in wars – millions of them over numerous centuries – my first thought goes to the mothers of those men. They are the ones who brought them to life and must carry the pain of death.
Everything in iconography is representative of something, and that’s why the rules can’t be changed or invented. The blue undergarment represents humanity. The red/purple outer garment represents the divine. The clay ‘first wash’ represents the earth from which we have emerged, and gold represents the transformation to which we aspire.
Books have been written about the position of the hands and fingers in iconography. I know there is a deep meaning in my attraction to the tiny hand grasping at the veil.
There is an axiom about the blank page being the most intimidating of all pages – and so this applies to the blank canvas as well, warns our instructor in the first hour of the first day of a weeklong iconography workshop. The blank ‘page’ in this case is the gesso board, a panel of poplar wood covered by linen cloth and made smooth by a mixture of rabbit glue, ground marble, and talc – a tradition in Russian iconography (called the Prosopon Method) that dates to about 1,000 years ago. On this gesso board, with no art background or inclination whatsoever, I will follow the ‘rules’ handed down by monks and holies of ancient times to “capture light” which will mysteriously reveal itself as ‘image.’
I am writing an icon – not ‘drawing’ or ‘painting’ it – because in the Greek language from which the original icon was manifested nearly 2,000 years ago, there is no word for painting or drawing. One writes an icon. And, to be even more specific, one does not actually write the icon, rather it is believed the writing comes through the hands . . .
There is much contemplation of one’s own life in the writing of icons. Once reserved as the lifetime work of monks in monasteries, the tradition of iconography is now available to the unsanctified as well. I sit in front of the blank gesso board, white and blank and empty, and I contemplate that the thing she has just said is not true for me – about the blank page being intimidating. I’m not intimidated by a blank page. I am, however, nearly paralyzed with intimidation by a page that has been coaxed and cleaned and edited and gone over a thousand times (by me), and made ready to be handed over to another set of eyes – anyone – the critic outside of me. I am not afraid of emptiness or blankness, or of my own efforts to fill a page and make it whole. I am afraid, however, of my finest work not being good enough. It’s easier for me to do my finest work and then hide it in a closet . . .
But iconography is not about the ego or individuality or forced creativity. It is about aligning oneself with truths that have been known for thousands of years. Iconography is not about the writer – it is about the listener, the one who can listen and let inspiration speak through.
The so-called “Tenderness Icon” is one of four maternal icons depicting aspects of parenthood. It was first written by the Apostle Luke in the first century A.D. Luke, a physician, writer, artist and apostle, is said to have written hundreds of icons in his lifetime. The tradition begins with the Apostle Luke, moves to Greece, arrives in Russia . . .
Trusting in the mystical communication between eye and hand, and having only a compass, pencil, knife, and ruler as our tools, we etch the image of the Mother and Child onto the blank gesso board to symbolize that the truths of this icon have already been marked into our lives. We are born 'downloaded' with universal truths. Aligning ourselves, capturing light, and revealing those truths – that is what iconography is about.
