article on icon painter
Nick Theodorakis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-04/07/083l-040799-idx.html
Pigments of the Imagination
John Snogren Uses Ancient Methods to Create Religious Art
By Patricia Howard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 7, 1999;
Page C01
Tap into John Snogren's "Heavenly Visions" Web site and watch the images of
an ancient, religious art form blossom quietly on the monitor: the Prophet
Elias, in moss-green robes, or Saint Catherine, in an exquisitely detailed
dress of rich red and gold. The Madonna's care-worn, sad yet serene face,
enveloped in a deep blue mantle, her eyes speaking of forbearance, of a quiet
meditativeness. These icons invite contemplation as they dwell quietly in
their small corner of cyberspace.
And through this turn-of-the-millennium tool, Snogren hopes to introduce
others to a timeless art form he practices today.
Tall and slight, Snogren, 40, works out of his book-filled Hyattsville home,
down narrow stairs leading from an airy, light-filled kitchen. At night, he
works as a waiter at Kinkead's to support his family. By day, he is an artist
creating religious images in a basement studio filled with works in progress,
painting on wood panels with paint made according to an ancient recipe, the
pictures subsequently transferred to a Web site in cyberspace
(www.heavenlyvisions.com).
"I take a little bit of egg yolk and water, mix it together, and then I take
pure pigment . . . that's the same pigment that's been used for hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of years, because it's from the same places where the
artists of the 13th century got their pigments.
"The funny thing is, you're mixing egg yolk and water, you're taking animal
skin glue, you're mixing with powders," Snogren continued. "You do these
things that haven't changed for hundreds of years, and then you go to the
computer, and you see it on the Internet!"
Born and reared as a Methodist in Onaway, a small town near the northern tip
of Michigan, Snogren came to this calling after converting to the Orthodox
faith and joining the Holy Orthodox Church in North America.
"I'm not doing this just because I like the style," said Snogren, who holds a
bachelor's degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. During his time in
New York he was torn between the "wild and crazy" life of an artist and the
religious precepts he'd been taught in his youth. At one point he visited his
brother, who had become a monk at the Orthodox Holy Transfiguration Monastery
in Brookline, Mass.
"I was surrounded by these gorgeous, huge icons. I saw people dressed in
black, unshaven, unbathed, monastics, and I heard this beautiful, simple
chant," Snogren said. "All of a sudden, you saw why you had the raging
passions . . . how one can have artist fire in his veins and love beauty so
much and still want to be pure, and in the icon I found the answer to that
struggle."
In the last seven or eight years he began to focus on painting icons;
traditionally, representations of sacred personages, doctrines or events. The
aim is to be not realistic but symbolic, to express the church's teachings.
But the computer has helped Snogren translate the icon's lofty religious
mysticism into down-to-earth cash.
"Almost all my sales are stimulated from the Web site," said Snogren, whose
work is priced from $800 to $8,000. "I get a lot of e-mail from people. . . .
It's amazing to sit at home and all of the sudden you get an e-mail from
Tokyo or Israel or Russia, or a little island off the tip of South America,
all these weird places."
Snogren also uses his computer to create promotional material and, at times,
to work out ideas before setting brush to surface. "I might say, okay, I like
this 7th-century reproduction of Christ, then I might take some illumination
pattern from the 13th century, using it as a decorative border because it
fits with a certain idea that this icon is about," Snogren said. "I lay
something out, and I would then just work on certain proportions. I would
mix, using the computer to size, to reshape, to scale, actually to see it in
advance."
While "Heavenly Visions" has boosted commissions, Snogren's job at the popular
Foggy Bottom restaurant Kinkead's pays the bills. "I always work in gourmet
restaurants, because I have another love," Snogren said, "cooking."
"In art school, I would be cooking for my art friends, my student friends,
these gourmet meals. . . . We had a lot of fun doing that. One of the big
battles in our school was trying to make the perfect cheesecake -- never mind
learning how to paint and draw," he said, laughing.
But painting is his real vocation. "A true icon really is about religion, and
it's about a vision that's been unchanged through the centuries. And I'm one
of these little voices sitting in a basement somewhere . . . another little
voice that's been passed on from artist to artist to artist to artist for
2,000 years saying, 'There is a God.' . . . The icons don't change, because
it's that same truth. And that's what really attracted me."
That's also what repels critics who contend that iconographers, bound to a
certain form and certain rules, paint only the same unchanging, flat, stiff
images.
"Everything is alike to the uninitiated," noted Gary Vikan, director of
Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery, a specialist in Byzantine and medieval art.
The purpose of the icon painter is not experimentation or risk-taking but
rather "to perpetuate and not to perturb or deflect the tradition."
"He becomes a channel," Vikan said, "that is greater than what he can do by
himself."
It is an idea that Snogren believes art historians and scholars in the past
have made little effort to understand. "The Western paintings are full of
drama and clouds and giant angels and lightning. The Byzantine icon is quiet
and humble, and more simple because it's the quietness of the still voice of
God speaking through: Obey me. Love me. Worship me."
But he believes the tide might be turning, with scholars taking a second look
at the form, and heightened interest in recent years inspired by various
traveling exhibitions, as well as shows related to the Russian czars.
Vikan noted the popularity of 1997's "Glory of Byzantium" exhibit at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And 1 million people saw the icons,
illuminated manuscripts and jeweled crucifixes before "Treasures of Mount
Athos" closed last year in Thessaloniki, Greece, he said.
"There's been an enormous growing interest in icon painting," concurs Anne
Odom, chief curator at Washington's Hillwood Museum & Gardens, which has a
substantial collection. "It goes back 10 years. Part of it in the last decade
is due to the opening up of Russia."
In Washington, Dumbarton Oaks has a small but choice selection of icons
available for public viewing, Vikan said. A handful can also be seen at the
National Gallery of Art. Far more, about 75, will be seen next spring when
Hillwood, currently under renovation, reopens with its collection of 18th- and
19th-century icons. And the Walters will open a gallery devoted to Russian,
Byzantine and Ethiopian icons in 2001.
Snogren hopes to have his own impact within the strictured form.
"I want to do something that will show hints of the fact that I'm using the
foil of this contemporary culture to react to this culture, but using the
language and the faith and the vision of someone who lived 1,500 years ago,"
he said.
"Look how the ice can wrap itself around a little flower, and it magnifies
that into this work of art that no artisan can possibly reproduce." He
paused. "What does that say? You think about that and then look at the icon.
Is there something more? And that's what I'm very quietly, in a very abstract
way, sort of trying to say."
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
_______________________________________________
| Nick Theodorakis |
| theo...@gusun.georgetown.edu |
|_______________________________________________|
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Jay Holman
Gerard Serafin
Jay Holman wrote:
> Anyone find the URL of this site??
> > Pigments of the Imagination
> > John Snogren Uses Ancient Methods to Create Religious Art
Try this one:
http://www.heavenlyvisions.com
--
Gerard Serafin
Celebrating the Romance of Orthodoxy:
A Catholic Page for Lovers:
http://praiseofglory.alabanza.com
Praise of Glory BookCenter:
"Do not read good books; read *great* books!":
http://praiseofglory.alabanza.com/books.htm
Jay Holman
with all this fasting coming to a peak over these three last days before Pascha.
Gerard Serafin wrote:
>
> Jay Holman wrote:
>
> > Anyone find the URL of this site??
>
> > > Pigments of the Imagination
> > > John Snogren Uses Ancient Methods to Create Religious Art
>