Off the Cloud

After taking such a long break I forgot about all the ‘non-fun’ little things that accompany any project. Suddenly, I feel like I fell out of the contemplation cloud to face the harsh reality of little decisions that just seem too hard.

This is where my recent ‘artwork as a baby’ approach seems to come handy. The last icon I worked on, Archangels, I took photos throughout the various stages of the work. It was like taking pictures of an ever changing baby, you know, the first year they seem to change daily. Granted, Archangels took me almost a year to complete.

All those photos now serve as a reminder of what the piece (and I) went through, all the ups and downs, decision making. It’s helpful, when in the midst of a new piece, to be reminded that it is a process, and it is about the process.

The drawings are in.

 

“Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring. The spring remains more important than the stream, for the only thing that really matters is for love to spring up inexhaustibly…”

 

                                              Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Annunciation, detail, Archangel Gabriel

 

Annunciation, detail, Virgin Mary

Releasing the outcome

Portrait of a Lady by KlimtNewlyweds by Klimt

“With a right intention, you quietly face the risk of losing the fruit of your work. With a simple intention you renounce the fruit before you even begin. You no longer even expect it. Only at this price can your work also become a prayer.   A simple intention… prefers what cannot be touched, counted, weighed, tasted, or seen…” T.Merton, No Man Is an Island.

Why am I including Klimt here?  I am responding to his raw unfinished images- they straddle the thin line between here and there (unseen), they don’t insist on completion, content to let the eye wander in the potentiality of what might have been.  Once touched by the unseen, the painter does no longer insist on result, on the perfection of the outcome.  The reaction of the viewers disappears from the priority list, if ever it was important in the first place. The images remain a testament to an experience of ineffable, signpost pointing vaguely in the direction should one want to follow.

Baby (Cradle) by Klimt

Just beyond

Bogomater (Mother and Child) by Vasnetsov

The piece

Annunciation by Burne Jones

I am about to make, the icon I am about to write, already exists- just beyond the eyesight. It is there- whole, complete, radiant. I have to go through a very much secondary process of making it visible.  What people will see, what they will respond to at the end is not what  I am responding to now.

Right now, there is a selince, an emptiness full of potential, a lull, a quiet beyond quiet.  The images

Nativity by Hughes

here are  the best way to describe my now.

Finding center

At some point I remember being asked a question: “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” And I said: “I just want to be…”

Sirin and Alkonost by Vasnetsov

Another image to set the stage, this one is by Vasnetsov, Bird of Sadness and Bird of Joy. Why would I put them in?

We tend to think in terms of good and bad, whatever happens – we immediately snap a judgment. We cannot let anything pass without, often unconsciously, deciding if it is somehow black or white.

What about letting things be? What about letting ourselves be- free ourselves from constant judging of everything around?  Be that tree, let things good and bad, sad and happy, black and white come and be, and fly away.  It requires one to find the center, without being swayed. Such is the goal for me right now- allow all to be and absorb not.  Just be.

Gathering

Before the start of the new piece I spend a lot of time in silence. Silence and quiet fill my regular life more and more, however, now it acquires a different level of importance.  I also rely heavily on visual images, though lately I’ve started emptying even my visual field, my environment, of everything unnecessary. I remove things, take down paintings, and seek out something else- 

something not necessarily related to the subject matter directly, something to set the mood-artwork that, to me, communicated an emotional, or, rather, spiritual state I am about to enter.  Here is some of the art, with more to come.  

At the time it was painted, Vrubel’s Madonna was criticized for being too distraught, too human, when iconographers were expected to walk away from anything remotely earthly human and ego-related.  Vrubel hovered over a thin line between divine and human, painting away the separation for the rest of his life, on his way to union.

 

 

 

 

 

Mikhail Vrubel The Virgin and Child 1884

Oil, gilding on zinc board  Church of St. Cyril, Kiev

Beginnings

After a long period of contemplation I am returning to the iconography. Every time I finish a piece (an icon), I think it is my last- I talk of quitting, I go into months-long withdrawal and recharging period. Then I emerge, incredulous, disbelieving, to face a new piece.

So it is right now:

The new icon – Annunciation- has been chosen, and not by me, as usual. It is completed, whole, radiant on a level just beyond the human eyesight. Now comes the ‘fun’ part- I have to put it into physical reality, piece by piece, shard by shard, prayer by prayer.

It seems insurmountable right now, but it is not my decision, or effort,  I am merely ” a pencil in the hands of God”.  The icon will be fairly large- almost 5 ft, and I am afraid -

icons are such a force, they sweep everything away- in a good way, that is- they sweep all the nonsense out, they take over, and stretch you to the utmost limits, questioning your assumptions of being, doing, divine, human, etc,

I feel as if I stand in the doorway, once I open this door, there is no closing it, yet I cannot walk away either, I am frozen in the doorway, battling my hidden ideas of control, decision, self, ego,

and releasing all of it, bit by bit, emptying myself out.