St Mary’s Icon School
New Icon School Off to a Great Start
This past Wednesday 11th January, 2012 the St. Mary’s Icon School was off to a great start. The students were gracious and well behaved – ie they did everything I asked them to do with interest and enthusiasm!
The Hourglass Nebula
I feel honoured to have them and very fortunate they are so willing to learn, not just about the art and techniques of writing and icon but wish, very much, to uncover the spiritual basis of this wonderful form.
With a sheet of copier paper and a pencil they were guided through a short meditation tracing the origins of these materials: from the living trees to the elements contained in them, such as the carbon, the basis of all organic life on this world, courtesy of a supernova explosion at some point in the distant past.
The ancient origins of all matter being brought together in this simple act of drawing. Worlds being united through a line, a dash or a dot. The significance of mindfulness when we use our materials is so important. The group then went on to create imaginitive scenes just using three types of mark they had created and reviewed each others work. The variety and beauty of this first short exercise was profound.
Iconographers have a number of rules to work by and they become rules of daily living once ingrained and if followed with sincerity. We looked at the first rule and then discussed what each element meant to us personally and it opened up some good areas for contemplation and growth.
After a well deserved coffee and panettone kindly donated by Fr. Shane to welcome the group, I took them on a short journey, with a lecture on the basic premises of Sacred Geometry. We saw how the circle – Unity- became a reflection of itself and in creating itself caused the formation of the vesica piscis. This mandorla is often found behind Christ or Mary in icons and give the icon it’s quality, that is, the icon is a gateway from the One to the Many. A door between our dimension and the Heavenly Realms. We continued with more complex shapes and then it was time for the iconographer’s prayer and some focused, silent studies to be made of aspects of clothing.
Clothing in icons is not the same as for more naturalistic artwork. Light emantes from within rather than being reflected, this is an essential difference that demarcates iconography from other forms of art and why we say an icon is written not painted. We are working on something holy, something of the Word of God.
The theme for the evening was Reverence and through the guided meditation and the silent studies and line drawings I feel that we were off to a meaningful start. Everyone took on board the feeling and sense of something special.
We finished with handing around a lit candle and saying or thinking a few words of prayer.
I am looking forward to week two and I know my students are also.
My God bless and guide them on this journey.
Enrolments are continuous over the first term as we build up the school, so if you or you know anyone who is interested, please do pass this on.
