12/27/2023 0 Comments Jovan athan... iconographerFather Bill places him in his cell the night before his execution. Most of his images tend not to concentrate on torture unless the focus is the Cross-and, even then, not in too much detail.įather Bill’s subjects include followers of other religions, among them Mansur Al-Hallaj (858–922), a Persian mystic in the Sufi tradition of Islam who was imprisoned and brutally dismembered in public. With Demetrius of Thessaloniki, the early fourth-century Christian martyr who was lanced with spears, there’s obviously a cry of pain on the face. While Father Bill prefers not to dwell too much on suffering, it is sometimes difficult to avoid. Most icons are never signed because iconographers believe the Holy Spirit did them.” When you commission an icon, you’re ordering the subject not the artist. “You aren’t looking at a McNichols painting you’re looking at Nestor. “If you’re praying with an icon of Nestor, you are praying with him as he is now in heaven,” he insists. A priest-monk during the closing years of the Soviet Union, he was found dead at the age of 33 outside his house in Zharky, Russia, with his throat slit and multiple stab wounds. The intercession of Santa Rosa, says Father Bill, offers not only healing but also transformation for the world.Īlthough many of the people he features may have died in dark and harrowing circumstances, Father Bill believes it’s essential to bring out their luminosity because “they are already in heaven.” This was memorably the case with the Orthodox martyr Hieromonk Nestor. Santa Rosa stands on the earth in her lay Dominican habit with her feet on the northern part of the Americas-and her left foot happens to be close to New England. Painted before the tragedy, it could be interpreted as a prophetic picture. Deeply disturbed by the killings, he hoped it might function as a healing image for members of the community. William Hart McNichols, “Elijah McClain,” acrylic on wood, 2020įollowing the murder of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, Father Bill sent his icon of Santa Rosa of Lima, patroness of the Americas, to the Catholic parish of Saint Rose in Newtown. The red buttons signify his terrible death, red being the color of the martyrs. It’s just 8 by 10 inches so it only took me about a week to complete.” The result is a tribute to “a very gifted, talented and beautiful soul.” Father Bill added light around his head and a golden-coloured shirt to echo scripture’s prophetic words about the chosen ones of God. “A friend of showed me his photograph and, as soon as I saw it, I thought ‘Oh my God! I have to do him.’ Technically it is an image since he’s not canonised. But Father Bill didn’t feel called in quite the same way as he was to paint Elijah McClain, a young black man who died in police custody in Colorado in 2019. Perhaps not surprisingly, there have been calls for Father Bill to create images of George Floyd, the 46-year-old African American killed during an arrest in Minneapolis, or of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American medical technician fatally shot by police officers in Louisville. ![]() ![]() They include over 80 portraits of the Mother and Child, icons of the ancient saints of history, and images of more contemporary figures who have often paid with their lives because of who they were or what they stood up for. Trained by the Russian-American master, Brother Robert Lentz, O.F.M., Father Bill has produced more than 300 mystical works of art, noted for their vivid hues and broad range of subjects. I’m trying to cause a metanoia or change of heart in the person looking at them.” “They’re really imploring and begging for compassion. “People often say icons seem sad to them but they’re not,” he points out. Now his icons and sacred images are commissioned by individuals, families, and churches across the globe. It’s been said that the vocation of an artist is to send light into the human heart and, over the course of 30 years, Father Bill has done just that, emerging as a leading international figure in his field. “There’s a childlike awe in being called to create along with the Holy Spirit,” explains Father William Hart McNichols as he works away in his “messy studio” in the New Mexican city of Albuquerque where he also serves as a priest for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
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