Let me tell you three stories

In my eye nests your beauty
Some 60 years ago, in the country called Yugoslavia, a little boy was
holding his mother’s hand as they were standing in an Orthodox
church, watching the re-appearance of old frescoes. All around them
were those austere Byzantine saints who fill little viewer with fear and
guild, however misplaced!
The step-father, Rufim, and his team of conservators and restorers
have just detached a mortar layer that had covered frescoes from 13th
and 14th centuries. These now emerged into the light of the day for
the first time in over 500 years. There is an excitement in the air, also
commotion as something has been discovered in the outer vestibule.
On the north part of the west wall, they have found an inscription,
totally unexpected and out of place. It was thought to have been writ-
ten in Arabic script people said, but the fullness of the mystery was to
be revealed later.
The inscription represented a verse composed by the great Persian
poet Hafiz (1320?-1389), written in the Persian language and yet, it was
incised in Arabic script over the fresco. One of the possible translations
is: “The pupil of my eye is the nest to your beauty”.
We shall never know who the erudite traveller was; he, who pro-
foundly affected by this beauty of another kind, gave orders to the cal-
ligrapher to engrave the inscription. Never mind that infidels created
such a beauty, its presence made him bow to it, pay respects and let
his heart declare it to posterity, as shortly afterwards, the church walls
would be rendered, to be made visible again only 500 years later.
The noble traveller, possibly a chronicler of events for the con-
quering Turkish army, rose above his own religious background to
recognise and acknowledge the transcendent Beauty which shines for-
ever undisturbed in the beyondness. It was a salutation to the eternal
celebration of man’s closeness to the Divine.
This hugely important event is, lamentably, almost completely un-
known, both internationally and even locally. You would be guessing
correctly if you said that the medieval town was Prizren, one of the
centres of Serbia in 14th century, and the little boy was me. It is not
improbable that this wonderful event planted a decisive seed in me,
to become an iconographer myself. After I first tried myself in what
I thought was icon painting, here I am, almost 50 years later, still at-
tempting to produce this “perfect” icon.

Sailing back to Byzantium
After many moons and almost full of days, I might decide to sail BACK
to Byzantium, using the gentle force of Grace to fill my sails. On arrival
in the golden city, I will see a banner reading: “This no country for
old men”, to which I will whisper: “I have never been old in my life!”.
Then, with the audacity of an old man with nothing to lose, I shall go
to the Royal Palace and ask for an audience to present my icon to the
Emperor.
Grey of hair, eyes wide open, heart singing, absorbing the golden
splendour of the Palace, I would be finally brought before the Emperor.
The icon I have been making all my life shall be presented with my
hands duly covered as is customary at Byzantine Court.
With an air of solemnity and otherness, the unibrow Porphyro-
genitus inspects the icon closely for an unbearable long moment...
“She is perfect”, he finally declares, with his face betraying a pass-
ing disbelief.
“The apple of my eye is the nest to your beauty”, he concludes,
mostly to himself. He leaves, not even glancing at me. After all, I am
but an instrument, a vessel, not a Creator. At best, I am the extended
hand of the Creator.
My eyes are now closed, tears rolling down my cheeks, I am finally
at home.

Saint Luke Painting the Crucifixion
There are a number of icons with Saint Luke painting the Mother of
God with Child, thus making him the first iconographer; some of them
are attributed to Domenicos Theotokopulos before he went to the West
and became famous as El Greco (The Greek).
One of them, though, stands out for me. That icon, in the Moraca
monastery, Montenegro, was painted between 1672 and 1673 by an un-
known master although some attribute the work to Avesalom Vujicic.
It is the most splendid piece: with an impeccable composition,
pleasing chromatic balance and overall, masterly execution. On his
artist's easel, Saint Luke is painting the Hodegitria (She Who Points
the Way) type icon, believed to be the prototype for the many to follow.
Throughout the years of my iconographic practice I have made sev-
eral replicas of this masterpiece.
In 2010, I decided to incorporate it in a contemporary religious art-
work. For a while and still, I have been exploring the phenomenon of
ambiguity and ambivalence in contemporary religious art through a
fusion of old and new, with a juxtapositioning of seemingly different
and irreconcilable worlds, very often using the old icons in a new set-
ting where they assume a different meaning and impact.
On a 120 x 90cm panel, I replicated St Luke from the Moraca mon-
astery icon in the action of painting. That was done as per the original,
using traditional techniques, tempera and gold leaf. However, the icon
on his easel was not Hodegitria but the Crucifixion itself; the saint was
sitting and painting in front of the crucified Christ, the ultimate drama
of mankind.
The background and the figure on the cross were delivered in a
contemporary, “abstract” way, using Dutch gold, acrylic and Black
Japan. The juxtaposition of those two realms tells us about the stable,
conservative, reliable and anchoring realm (St Luke) while the ab-
stract realm of the Crucifix and the background stands for the ever
changing and evolving, dynamic, vibrant, chaotic and volatile world. It
is in the precarious balance between those two polarities that life itself
keeps unfolding.
There is a further dimension: The Crucifix that St Luke is painting,
and the way in which we see it on his easel, is entirely unlike what he
sees in front of him. This is an allusion to the perception game, known
from ancient time-sand even present in the Gospels which differ in
recording the same events. Akira Kurosawa’s film, 'Rashomon', which
is about four different witnesses who give very different accounts of
the event they witnessed, establishes an excellent paradigm of the per-
ception issue.
The work is completed by the use of the fractured frame which is to
remind us of the fragmentary nature of all life, as nothing really lasts
in a long and uninterrupted line but in a series of segments and frag-
ments. This fractured frame is also an allusion to broken humanity
and the imperfection of man’s nature.
The colours used for the frame are borrowed from the chromatic
symbolism of icons: red for the Divine and blue/green for the Human
nature of Christ.
Saint Luke Painting the Crucifixion was selected and displayed as
a finalist in the Blake Prize for Religious Art in Sydney in 2010 and is
now part of the permanent art collection of Sydney Riverview College.