I was too busy to write the blog yesterday.  Had to finish my icon (ikon) and drive home. When I was planning my trip to take this class they advised that many people stayed late on Saturday to work on their Icon, then stayed for the Sunday liturgy. We all ended up finishing, or at least being done, at a reasonable time. Art is funny in that a lot of the time, I won’t say all of the time, ending is a hard choice. You could keep working forever on a project as your taste changes and your abilities grow and your desires shift. It’s not like a math problem,  I will say that.

The whole final part of that project I grappled with wanting to be done.  Had reached the limit of my ability and much more work would have ruined the thing. I was petrified to make the wrong choice and ruin the work. I think part of that is true to all work, but it is especially true of ikon painting. You can only make the final decisions with the full context of the more-complete icon, and the wrong choice can ruin all the previous ones. It wasn’t clear that my halo should be a simple umber color until I had made the choice to make quite a dark figure.

There is a parable shared by my teacher, an abbreviated one, about a church. Built by a river, the direction and form of the building was directed by the landscape, the size of the windows, the width of the halls, the shape of the narthex. Those architectural qualities change and create the light and the arrangement of the interior, of course. The light landing in certain ways, the parishioner moving through the space in a certain order and with certain attention, these things influence the arrangement of icons, and the arrangement of icons influences their shape and color etc. So, a truly good Ikon is informed truly, deeply, knowingly, by the shape of the river outside