This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello everyone, It
is my great joy to be back with Aiden Hart to discuss a wonderful image
that he's designings. Those that have paid attention to my channel have seen many
discussions with Aiden. His insight into iconography also his own mastery of the skills
makes them really one of the modern masters of iconography, but also of understanding
the role and the symbolism and icons. And he is working on a beautiful
new image of the heavenly Jerusalem and its relationship to creation. And in some
ways it's very in to the images of everything that I've developed, you know,
with the with the with the mountain and the Crucifixion or the flood,
and it really goes to show how you can show the same universal truth through
different prisms. And so I really want to explore this image with him and
see how he came to develop it the way he did. And so Aiden,
thanks for thanks for talking to me about this Jonathan. And so what
is that? What is the impetus? Let me show the image first of
all, and then we can we can we can talk about it. Tell
us a bit about what the impetus was for this image, Like what what
prompted it? Yeah? Thanks Tonovan. I got an email from an Orthodox
marine bologist. He's a professor at Point Lobus University in the West Coast of
America, and being a marine bologist, he was reinterested and somehow bringing together
evolutionary theory, obviously in the sense of of an I f stick one,
but the sense of a gradual creation, let's say, with Christ with Orthodox
theology. So it's quite an exciting project. Beside studied moology at university myself,
and I wanted to bring together scientific discovery, but an emphasis on Christ
is the Tellos twice as the beginning and the middle in the end. So
as a real challenge, I somehow wanted to bring together Heaven and Earth,
acid weare and this movement towards the New Jerusalem. So basically the commission came
from Andrew and he wanted it to be used as a point of discussion and
teaching. Really it's big. It's going to be roughly two meters or something
like that, perhaps traveling around a bit. Probably will use it in England
for about six months before we send it over, So it's going to be
a point of discussion. Really there's already a orthodox sort of creation group,
I think by discussing it there. So my main influence has been obviously the
New Jerusalem, the Book of Revelation, but also Maximus the Confessor in the
sense it's it's trying to indicate something of Saint Maximus's teaching and an icon.
All right, So let's look at some of the elements. I mean,
I was really I find it really beautiful because what I see in the image
in some ways it's taking this image of the cosmos really from from an apocalyptic
vision. And so the image of the heavenly Jerusalem is the is the top
of the world. It's something like the source of reality. Christ is in
the center. He you know, he becomes in some ways the tree of
life, the middle of the garden, and the waters are flowing down from
him. So tell us a bit about some of the choices that you made
in the in the image, and we can start at the top. Yeah,
probably the best place beginning is the end. Really, we can only
understand the beginning and the light of the end to which God is direct to
get So, first of all, the image itself is actually three by two
in proportions, which means that the bottom half is a square, the bottom
two third rather is a square, and the top is a dome. And
Christ is situated in the middle of the dome, the circle at the top,
but also is the middle of the top of the square. And four
sided squares the symbol of many cultures of the created world, the four elements,
the four points of the compass. So Christ is at the heart of
that. He's the log offs God become flesh. So it begins and ends
there that the course, as you see around him, is the new Jerusalem,
and it's a new Jerusalem which includes the whole of creation. What struck
me about Maximus is teaching compared to say, with din with Dinysius Theopigide,
it's so you're sort of leaving behind mattterly, we end up just with of
pure ideas. But Maximus, all the material symbols are taken up and a
part of the end they're lot sort of spat out as this thing. So
that's why I've got sort of the divine things that the angelic realm at the
top, the Mother of God together with plants, the mineral kingdom and all
that. So that's a starting point. Really wanted it all culminating in Christ
and behind Christ himself. Of course, you've got this in microcosm often talked
about the factual nature. So the whole icon is a square united with a
circle. And behind Christ again you've got a circle turned as a diamond.
Combined with the circle is divinity. So Christ is fully god fully man.
But creation is also created by nature. It's material by nature, but it's
called to be united to God by grace. All three really got this square
united with the circle. Well, another way to put it is the cross
runs for everything vertical, you know what's on top. Yeah, it's amazing,
I mean because in some ways it's the symbolism of the church itself with
the dome and the square. But it's also just an arch, you know,
like to see how universe of this symbolism. You know, the arch
of a of a of a window has the same structure as the church itself.
It's this little it's this beautiful kind of fractal symbolism that comes in.
And so I'm curious, why did you put the virgin up at the top
of the image or or in the in the top part of the image.
What? What? What was your what was your thinking there? Yeah,
in the well a whole lot of things really that the Virgin is like the
microcosm of the whole Church. You know, God became man in here,
so in herself she sees like a symbol fruition of the Church. So Christ,
in this humility humblesome himself to raise us up. So Christ is in
the center. So even though it's not the highest, he's in the center.
So he's he's the log offs the heart of everything. But he wants
to sort of exult the church, and that's symbolized in the Virgin. I
actually had a bit smaller originally, but the commissioners asked if I could make
her larger, So all along I was sort of under balance. Christ is
God here for the top. But on the other hand, Christ is God
in the humility, you're into his creation and wraps it around himself. He's
happy, as it were, to lower himself to transfigure, transfigure us.
Yeah, and there's also like an incarnational movement if you follow from the top
and the glory of God here at the top, and then you have this
descent of God into the world as a seed, you know, in the
Virgin, and then fully revealed in the end, you know, of Christ
in the center of the whole story. So I think it works really well.
And it also suggests the east and the apse of the church, with
the Mother of God there and at the you know kind of indeed, if
you were standing in the church, that what you would see, right,
you would see her be back there, and then above you you would see
Christ. And so there's this reflection of that structure in the in the image
itself, and of course the it'll bees are dark. At the very top,
you've got this single sphere, but three problems coming out, so that
that is the Holy Trinity, three at one. So again we go through
Christ to the Father and through the Holy Spirit and the same. So everything
comes from the Holy Trinity at the top and moves toward the Holy Trinity at
the top. So the horizontal gradually gets taken up into the vertical. So
that's why if you go down to the bottom, I strug thing to unite
what's called Kronos clock time with KOs, which is more sort of divine and
vertical. So I decided to have the six days of creation and bands and
at the bottom just slightly curved. But as you go up, the curve
gets steep and until ultimately it comes to a point toward Christ, so that
at the bottom one starts with the flat disordered I said, where the world
is that form and void? And then gradually we rise up to high water.
But yeah, I hadn't thought of that when I saw it at the
outset, because I was wondering, why do you have these kind of tears
going up and these circles. But now I can clearly see that in some
ways it's the dome of Heaven that is flattening itself out to become the Earth.
And the opposite is true, which is flat Earth is kind of moving
into this this this heavenly shape. That's amazing. Yeah, and the the
the gradual sense of creation stops from the out comes toward the inside. So
Andrew, you want to told me that the likely phases of the development of
the created world. So you've got large and extinct creatures on the left and
the right, and graduates you move forward, you come to more recent creatures.
So you've got this chonos and horizontal being consummated in the divine time.
Okay, so that's why you have the like dinosaurs on the outside. I
was like, why what are the dinosaurs doing there? I guess it makes
sense that they would be on the outside for sure. So in some ways
it's like this movement into into our experience or like, you know, the
world in which we in which we live, and Christ has sort of overcome
death, not just in the sense of our physical death, but death in
terms of separation, so that in some sublime and comprehensible way in Christ or
extinct animals to sort of gathered together, notts, gathered together into the present.
So so that extinct in another sense in Christ, they're not. Some
people ask me why I've got a hedge around Paradise. It's initially just because
the word paradise is a Persian word meaning a walled park where the emperor would
enjoy time with his family and friends. So is the sense of distinction between
Paradise, which is planted by God initially, and the thickened world wild world
around. So the way I see it is that God planted the gardeners like
an icon with how he wanted us, as the prophets, priests and kings
and queens of the world, to gradually expand the wars of Paradise to make
the whole universe of Paradise. So this distinction between Paradise and the rest of
the world is important, not to create a sense of sacred and profane,
but the opposite that that's the beginning, as it were, and gradually it's
re acted correctly, which of course we didn't those hedges, as it would
expanded the whole world a garden city. Basically, Yeah, I think,
I mean, I think your insight also to make a wall that is vegetable,
like a vegetable wall, like a you know, an organic wall,
and then have the heavenly Jerusalem being this stone wall. I think it's intuitively
very right. It just feels right, like because you feel that there is
a there was a border, there was a limit to the garden, like
you said, that was meant to be expanded, but that that limit would
not have you know, would not have been the same type of limit that
would be found in the city. So I really think it's a Intuitively,
it's a it's a very strong idea to have used the hedge. And also
because gardens were used to seeing hedges as as limits in gardens, it's but
I've never seen that ever, Like I don't think I've ever seen that represented
that way, So I think it's a great insight on your part. Tell
us a bit about these this vertical down here, like so you have the
cross and then you have these two trees I imagine the Tree of Life and
the Tree of Knowledge maybe, but tell us a bit about how your decisions
on those. Yeah, I'd always been perplexed in a why God should put
this tree and knowledge of good and evil there? Often Protestant writers have said
all this just to sort of test us, but it didn't seem to sort
of fit with my understanding of God that he put something they had test us.
So I was really fascinated when Efram wrote that the tree of knowledge and
good and evil can be understood as the created world. So if we Adam
and Eve had received it with thanksgiving, then it would have been knowledge of
good. In other words, we wouldn't just then have just seen that there's
a nice fruit. I would have seen that as an expression of God's love,
so we would have received it eucharistically. But if we just grabbed it
because it's just nice to taste and turned up back on God, then it
become knowledge of evil. So that that really made sense to me. You
know, God, in his humility wanted to create something the sense from which
he is absent, which is our free will. I given you everything.
I'm going to stand back now and I want you to be grown ups to
live properly. You can live improperly if you want. That's your feedom So
you've got the tree of knowledgical and level there which which we botched it up
with. So that's why the Beneva then walking down hill beside clothed now.
But so Christ becomes the tree. Of course, the word ross in Greek
is stavross, but also selaw, which can be tree and wood of the
cross at the same time. So above that is the tree of knowledge of
life. And I've made at three. This is the tree of life has
got himself the Trinity. And the three colors I've used are those used in
the rubulop prinity. I cut the sort of the pink and the red and
the green, the father and the left, the son of the middle expirt
on the right. And then of course you got the cross. And this
is a dual cross. It won't just be a wooden cross, it will
be a glorious cross. So Christ enters our fallen world. And as the
tree of life becomes dead, becomes the cross the tree of death, and
that becomes the tree of life. And I said that the sign of the
Son of Man will appear in the heavens before I return. So this is
often depicted as a jewel cross of earlier praving mosaics. So I said,
the cross of Death becomes the coming of the Kingdom and the future. So
that's why it's going to be a jewel cross. And as you mentioned earlier,
the four rivers come from the Cross, the tree of life and Christ
above, because it's not the cross itself, it's Christ on the cross.
There is the source of the river. So you've got this four rivers there.
Yeah. I like the idea that because we're used that we see this
image, you know, in It's funny how you can see how at some
point the iconographic intuition is just becomes a language because we're used to seeing in
the image of the Last Judgment, we're used to seeing fire come from under
the feet of Christ. And then here because you're showing the order of creation
rather than the Judgment per se, it's still an apocalyptic image, but it's
it's a powerful insight to have the water which flows from from Christ through the
frost, through the trees, with all the images that we have of you
know, Christ's side being pierced and the water flowing that that was the water
paradise, all these images. It's I really love I really love it because
it's completely new. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this, But
it is at the same time completely traditional because all the associations, if you
know them, they come, they appear right away. It shows you how
there's all this room within the iconographic language if you do it with the right
attention to tradition but also deep understanding of it that's not just wrote copying that
you can come up with new images that immediately strike us as right even though
we've never seen them before. And so I really love that the image of
the water is coming down. I am surprised that you don't have four.
You have like three rivers, well, but there are actually four and now
is four? How is that? I think? Actually does it work?
Now? I think basically you've got spin Wasson's designed, and I think I
think the river at the top is the fourth bomb. Okay, so this
would be the one and then these would be So that's how you see it,
like that one and then and then three more. Yeah, and you
notice that the water goes uphill on either side. You got this funny sort
of yeah, yeah, I worrying about that. So Bishop calistos One said
that Christ comes to us out of the future as well as out of the
past and in the present. It's one reason why we face east. We're
sort of moving toward the right in the sun that Christ. And I'm fascinated
by the Roman apses, the early Roman apses. A lot of apses have
been asked to Fesca have been inspired by this, so giving the image of
Christ there of course in the apps. But behind you have brightly colored clouds,
normally which a sunrise colored cloud. So on the one hand, you're
looking at Christ present here as we worship, but on the other hand we're
looking at Christ coming in the future. So time goes forward and backwards in
God. So I wanted the river to get up here as it where as
well as down with Helt, just to sort of play with that sense of
the elasticity of time in Christ. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I
mean there's also a way in which you know, we know that the water
goes up. I mean, this is a weird thing. Like we know
that there's a cycle of water, and there's this relationship between heavenly water and
earthly water in Genesis Genesis one. But visually, what's interesting about it is
it as this, you know, it is we have a structure that's very
very prime primal, and I don't know to what extent we can explain it,
but there's a structure you see in iconography, and you see it,
you see the central pillar across and then two things on the side that are
that are doing something like that, whether it's the two snakes on the Krozier,
you know, whether it is sometimes it's sometimes foliage that will be coming
back up on the two sides. So there's this deep insight about that this
being right. And so you know, even if even even when I looked
at it and I didn't know what your intention was, it didn't matter,
because it feels right, even structural, even if I don't totally understand the
meaning, there's something about it which I recognize as being something like the center
and then these two aspects that are you know, coming up to praise,
coming up to react, coming up to even attack sometimes like it could be
different, different versions of it, but it doesn't. It really is the
center and these two sides. So yeah, I thought it looked intuitively right.
And so the other part which is really interesting to me and I love,
is that in some ways you have the creation of the physical cosmos at
the bottom of the image in some ways because it's the most material. And
so you have the six days of creation here moving up towards towards Eden and
then up towards the final revelation. So you have this idea in some ways
of the you know, the this relationship of the different heavens. So you
have the fear moment kind of under the garden of Eden, which is which
just sounds a little weird, but maybe you can tell us a little bit
about about those decisions. Yeah, So when I became Orthodox forty years ago,
I remember from my parish priest, father Eve Dubar, reminding me the
Sabbath is actually the Saturday and the Sunday's the eighth day. And it got
fascinated by this concept of the eighth day, which has joined to the previous
seven days the creation. But the eighth theare is also called the first day
of eternity, after which they know other days. So at the bottom you've
got these different layers gradually getting steeper in the middle, so that you come
to seven and the seventh day, not one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven. Yeah, so Adam and Eve is sort
of walking down the sixth day. Then you got this bit of seventh there,
but then everything above the top river is the eighth day. So I
wanted that sort of movement, that the progressive movement upwards, and a bit
of an aside but relevant. Nonetheless, one method I use for painting is
to do a sort of puddly, especially if I'm doing garments and ground,
a rather messy puddle, and then gradually add more detail, so the garments,
for example, might end up with fact crisp highlights. So this made
me think that creation and movement toward crisis, the talos isn't leaving chaos behind,
replacing it just to pure orders. You're got pure order, You've got
chaos below, bubbling, bubbling up all sorts of potentiality. So instead of
seeing it horizontally moving from chaos to order with no chaos, I thought vertically
stacking up. And it happens like that of course in nature that you have
mutations happening all the time, the sort of chaos and mutations, and once
in a while one mutation helps you adapt better. Without that chaotic mutation,
you wouldn't have the opportunity to select the best to adapt better to one situation.
So that fascinated me. So you've got this rather sort of chaotic water.
There's some order to it being gradually moving up that. Nonetheless, the
basis is this sort of I would think of this chaos of the physical world
as the freedom that God has given to the inanimate world peculiar and I,
as human beings, have a free choice certain the way that water doesn't.
But God has given water a certain freedom through this chaos. So at every
point God, in this humility, gives things a certain freedom according to their
nature. Yeah, I think I think the insight is quite is quite right.
And you know, I always say that the tohubohu, you know,
the the prime order waters of creation, they're still there. They're not that
God didn't remove them. He basically pulled creation out of out of them,
but they're still there, you know, as this potentiality at the bottom of
the world, out of which like you said, possibility emerges, and then
and then we we cast light on those possibilities, and we select them,
and we choose them, and then we we tend them, you could say,
in order to make them thriving. So no, I think I think
the basic structure is intuitively quite quite right. I really enjoy The other thing
that surprised me, though, is that I would have if I had done
this, I would have put I would have flipped this. I would have
put the sun on this side and I would have put the kind of nighttime
on the other side, just because I'm used to seeing the sun on the
right hand of Christ, you know, like Adam and Eve and then you
see the sun in the moon. That's That's the one thing that that was
one of the very very few things that I look at it like I would
have flipped that. But you know, when we look at each other's work,
you know, we look at it, you know through the prism of
someone who who who when he sees a beautiful image like this, wishes he
I wish I would have been the one to make it. You know,
it's like, oh, this is so I wish I would the one that
made this image. Well, it's still. I mean, I'm still taking
an advice. So this is the fairst draft in a way, Andrew got
people to give feedback. But it's interesting that the Hebrew day begins with sunset,
not sunrise. In the Mount Athos, I was for a while we
would set the clocks by the sunset. So there's a movement from darkness toward
light and meeting to read left or right of course, so there is that
aggression from dark to light. And on the left you've got sort of the
little speckles there that's like the dust which gradually regulate into the planetary constellations.
So that's again a lotic movement left. Now, one thing i'd say that
who do you think is to the left and right of Christ? Well my
understanding. You know, it took me a while to think about to realize
what it was. But then when I looked at the way the image was
structured, I think, I really I like it. It's clearly not the
Mother of God and John the Baptist. And then I thought, it's Adam
and Eve. That's it again. Why don't you you flip them up here
so you have them. It's because you wanted to have the virgin and Saint
John the foreigner structure at the top. Yeah, good points. Really remember
why I put them on that way? Yeah, because that because you usually
see Adam at the right side and change in the last judgment. So that's
what That's the thing that threw me off a little bit. I was like,
perhaps to change them over then, Yeah, so that people relate that
to the resurrection. Yeah, anstis that and then and the often you see
in the last Judgment you see them kneeling at the altar, uh, you
know, beneath the feet of Christ, and so they have that order.
Yeah. It's a great idea, you know, because it does tell the
final story in some ways in a manner that I've never seen told. Because
you know, we represent this idea often, the idea that you're representing here,
we often represent it as the apostles, you know, sitting and ruling
with Christ, that type of imagery. But I think the idea of showing
Adam and Eve as a king and a queen in the kingdom, it brings
it all together in terms of creation, right, if we're talking about an
image of creation, I think it's a wonderful insight and quite a bit in
the way that those figures will be dressed. It's a bit difficult from this
tiny scale, but they won't just be king and queen, but also the
prophets, so they have a profit hat. And also that you notice that
they're offering bread and wine. Wondering I didn't catch that, Okay, yeah,
yeah, So this is a symbol of them using creation properly. In
other words, they've changed from partaking incorrectly of the created world and are taking
properly, which is to fashion it well, to make good wine and good
bread, but also then offer it to God with thanksgiving, in other words,
to see the logos within the logo of all his creation. So they're
being restored to the role as prophet, priest and king, and and above
them of course there representatives as the whole of the church, people of more
different races there and different ages male and female. So as with from other
of God, that group behind will be a summation of a church. But
also in Adam and Eve, it's a summation of the church, our fall,
theirs because they're being raised. That struck me actually when I first saw
the resurrection icon when I became Orthodox. That's wonderful that the very people out
of the need through whom the whole creation fell. Actually the first to be
saved. I thought that God's forgiven us the one has been missed about the
first to be raised. Yeah, and there's already an insight of the cosmic
aspect of what's happening at the resurrection, Like you can you can feel that
this is hinting to this cosmic moment that you're showing here, which is in
some ways I really love the idea. It really just all of it comes
together because in the in the Book of Revelation, you have this idea that
you know, the the Kingdom's offer their crowns up, you know, and
also in some ways all their good works are kind of offered up to Christ
and using the bread and the wine because people who don't know. But in
the traditional idea of the of the Eucharist was that the people make the bread,
you know, and then they bring it up so that it will then
be consecrated. So it's like an offering of creation. You've talked about this,
I think even with me before. You know, the idea that that
it's this offering of all creation ultimately in the Eucharus is what's going on and
so having that up here in the heavenly Jerusalem is a great is a great
way to create that summation. One of the things too, that when you
mentioned about the seven days, I don't know if you thought about it,
but if you have the seventh day being here, that's also the Sabbath in
the sense of the cross, right, because we have this idea that that
the holy Sabbath is the day that Christ, the day of Christ's death.
It's the perfect Sabbath. I was rereading parts of Saint Maximan's The Confessor this
morning, and I was really taken by how he talks about the cross.
He says, all visible things phenomena in the Greek need a cross, and
all intelligible things spiritual things, invisible things need a tomb. And what you
mean by all visible things need to cross maximums are saying that I'm looked at
the horizontal part of the cross. God created great diversity and embraces that diversity.
Everything doesn't melt down to big blob that the trees a tree and the
rocks of rock, et cetera. But then the vertical You've got to go
down first to the logos at the heart that created all these and then they're
raised up to the heights to return them to the logoss without losing their distinction.
And then it says that the intelligible things, that our spiritual perception of
things needs a tomb. In other words, we need to go beyond.
And this is the whole symbol thing, isn't it that God comes to through
symbols. But then there's always something bed on the somethle. So if we
cling to the symbol, we die. So we've got to receive that glory
but also take it to the tomb. I think Mark there's another one beyond
even that, and one beyond that. So that was one aspect of his
teaching. I wanted to show that that the sort of centrality of the cross,
not just as the death of Christ, but as you've often said that
it's like a tree, isn't it that's rooted in heaven, rooted on earth,
that spreads out, but yet it's one connected to the sky. Then
it will die, definitely, definitely. So so tell us about the plan
for this image. You said it's going to be in a church, and
are you going to be document I mean, I made, you'll be documenting
the making of it. It's quite a it's quite an undertaking. Yeah yeah,
probably. Actually it will end up in the university. I don't know
if it will be in the chapel, but in the university anyway, but
because it'll be painted and egg temperate, and I like to leave egg temperate
at least six months before Vannas and you suggested that I have it and use
it in England. In fact, I've been asked to give a talk at
the Bath Orthodox Arts Festival again, so hopefully i'll have it really by then
we can take it there. But you know, I quite like to have
it as a as a as a talking point. I mean, it is
an icon in the sense that it's iconographic, but it will be paid.
It on a panel. It won't be paid yeah yeah, okay a two
meter panel. I haven't decided entirely, but it'll be big anyway, yeah,
between one point six to okay, all right, wow, So yeah,
I mean I want to be a talking point. And it's more I
suppose it's more like an illuminated manuscript in the sense that it's not something that
you put in the church to venerate. That's why she could say that if
there is one day of the liturgical year, where i'd be appropriate it would
be Subtember the first, which the previous patriarch pointed as the day in creation.
So it is actually part the church calendar, but it's also it is
I think it's a I think that your images is an apocalyptic image. I
think that it's appropriate in that in that sense that it's completely coherent with an
image of revelation, which focuses on the summation rather than the judgment. And
so although it's an image that we've never seen before, I think that it
fits perfectly well with with with our tradition, you know. And and there
are there are versions of that, like in the West, you have these
types of images that try to show the ontological relationship between Christ and the world.
It's not like there aren't there are many precedents, I think for for
your image. It's just that you bring it together in such a such a
cohesive, such a cohesive way, which in some ways is the thing that
that we're that we can do right, that we can we can stand on
the shoulder of giants, as we say, and kind of say, oh,
well, I see these threads coming together, you know, we can
just push it a little further and see how it comes together. The general
there for the arrangement came from an icon all Croatian rejoices, a new a
Russian icon. The idea of the arch at the top, and that's really
different in the bottom half, but the sort of the white upper area with
the arches that was inspired by that. I wasn't sure how to depict the
New Jerusalem, which is a square basically with twelve gates as I came across
this image from it's a fresco from Italy painted in ten nineteen. I think
San Pietro Almonte and Sibati in Italy, and I think the reason why they've
done it like that is you want everything to be visible. Nothing is hidden,
so this is the only way, really you can get all twelve gates
visible. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's sort of it's sort of a square,
but it's not our bunt all twelve gates visible, that's right, Okay,
So I see it's a great it's a great solution to show an acnographic
space that reveals itself, but that still suggests the square without hiding the different
parts. Yeah, yeah, yes. A lot's been written recently, really
from the time of George. I'll Alfronski on the different perspective systems used in
icons, and in this perspective has sort of stolen the scene. But in
fact I figured there are about seven types of icon perspective. One is multiview
perspective, like in this one. That's to say you're viewing the square or
Cubic whative. It is New Jerusalem from all different angles at once, so
all gates are visible. Of course, in garden Guard is not limited to
space. So in general, an icon of confounds our rational faculty to help
us to go from from there, which is good, but it has limitations
into the noose, into the neuetic faculty, which can This is the real
tesser act, not this scientific stuff about four dimensions like this is. This
is an actual testeract. But you can show everything you know simultaneously in a
in a space. But it's interesting to think about that what you said,
because in some ways, you know, if you think of the I would
say that this is a meaningful Cubism in some ways where the Cubists did it
in a manner that was esthetic and not necessarily trying to point to meaning.
But now you're you're flipping space, and you're you're showing all these different facets
simultaneously, but rather to reveal something about creation and the relationship between one and
and twelve. So that's a I think it's a great it's a great fact.
Probably all of the as it were, discovery, such a maybe vwdiscovery.
It's a twenty century art calor field painting, for example, saying well,
the surface is flat, so while trying to make it three dimensional using
perspective whatever, all these things. Really I've always been in the sacred tradition,
but as you say, Cubism, for example, is always the icon
that we kept it in the round with the sacred. Just have taken that
one esthetic tool and sort of separated it, which is really exciting. I
think a lot, a lot of research has been done on a lot of
the orthodox roots of early Modernism, often in a based way, but you
know, it's there, it's not actually a discovery at all. Yeah,
and there are ways that we can recapture. And I mean, I think
that's some of the work that you've done, Father Silvan, many of the
of the Romanian artists as well, who are trying to kind of say okay,
well, let's get you know, we can also take some of the
best elements of these traditions and reintegrate them into a vision that is hierarchical and
you know, and doesn't doesn't try to just transgress to transgress, but rather
is able to kind of mold, re out, mold our vision so that
we can have a better insight. Yeah. So tell me about the carving
that's back behind you, because you know it's like you're tempting me by putting
that up right there for you Donald Industry. Yeah, this has been quite
a complex commission. It's the three, the US and the and it's commissioned
for an Orthodox church to have an interior door. And it's going to be
the upper panel of the door. So it's carved and this will be in
a door. Yeah, the door. Yeah, it's quite quite rd Yeah,
but live nice little high or something. Yeah, it's beautiful. I
mean it's also I'm so jealous. I've never had the chance to do to
do a color carving, to have to have it painted. It's quite it's
really amazing. I found sometimes it's quite good to polychrome as long as you
do justice to the wood carving that just sort of take it and paint so
you can see the wood coming through because you don't depend so much from good
lighting to show the detail. Yeah, with low relief, if the lighting
is good, it just looks a bit like a blobb at a distance.
And so yeah, you've done it with stain instead of painting it, painting
it like that. Yeah, I used oil paint, but put lots and
lots of turpscent. So it's alms for stain. Really, So I see
me sealed the wood first and then used oil. You can't really use a
temper in a situation like this. And then and then put a think coat
of varnish and waxed it over the top. Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Is that? The only are you going to make other other panels for this?
This assistance one? That's one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
hadn't seen you carve in a while though, have you. It seems like
this is it's been a while since I've seen you make it an elaborate Yeah.
Well, I don't suppose so many people commission carving, so I just
do what I'm permissioned to do. Yeah, I did two carboys about two
years ago. But yeah, they're big gaps where I don't get anything stone
is more common because they can be part of an icon, screen or whatever.
I don't know about you, but I find stone easier to carve than
wood. With wood, for sure, so many chisels and you got to
worry about the grain. And yeah, stone you just have flat chisels pretty
much. You just you know, and then this and then wood. It's
like it's whole and you have to keep them super sharp. You know.
With stone you don't have to think about it so much. Shoving them a
little, not too much if you don't want them to be too sharp.
Yeah, I prefer I prefer coroming stone by far. Yeah, and form
merely soap stone, isn't it all steer type rather? Yeah, that's mostly
what I'm doing. Have you ever tried to carve the well? You really
kindly gave me a piece, but I just I just have got round.
I really like to. Once you carve that, you will you won't you
won't be you know, you'll start writing the emails saying Jonathan, I need
more of that steel type. Yeah. I have carved ivory that sort of
bit similar, I suppose, and that it's gotten a grain at all and
really dense. And when I was at Mount Alfast. I was commissioned to
carve something for the patriarch, and there's a wood called flamori, which I've
never come across before. It's actually grainless. It's not boxwood, but I've
got boxwood to look at, but not not as hard as box would.
I did a kind of the Potatus icon with it, and I really enjoyed
that. Have you ever tried carving boxwood before? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, it's really amazing. Yeah that's good. Yeah. I wanted
to say about the the icon is the challenge was being pedagogic in the sense
of teaching that I just don't like images that are just like illustrations that the
like things you read in one's mind, so and that sort of takes away
that soulishness of a work. I think the work of art should always hit
you right in a sort of texus, and then you can unfold the inner
meaning. So I just found the only way to get a unity was to
really have a reduced color scheme, so basically you're all green and blue,
which would be close. And then I started reading a book. This one
actually got it here by here and she she uses the Greek term in our
gear, not in the gear, but in our gear, which is really
the immediate impact of esthetics on the soul. And if I'm down in the
right way, then it brings us closer to God rather than just being titilation.
So apart from all the content of the kind, I really wanted it
to have beautiful in its own rights, and the composition and the color,
and I was really struggling with that. But then I found if I really
limited the color palette, then they're the details there sort of it comes one,
yeah, because there are a lot of details in you write. If
you had you could get distracted by little animals and all the you know,
all the dinosaurs and all these things. But I, like you said,
you don't have that experience. I think I think a lot of it is
also because Christ appears very strongly and the you know, the colors here,
the kind of orange yellow color, and also Adam and Eve, so the
characters in this center, because the colors are stronger there than all these little
details here maybe at first seem ornamental, uh, and then they and so
they kind of they kind of fuse together. But if you pay attention to
them, you can see them, but they don't. But they don't.
They don't call out, you know, they don't. It's a limited various
the color palette of the trees and animals to the left and right, so
they're there, but they're not different colors. If I put green lazy everywhere,
than they're distract from Christ. Yeah, what is this here, this
little image here? Yeah, well that sounds the the line with the kid.
Yeah, the prophecies of Isire. Yeah, so you've got the there
and on the other side as well, so it's the prophecy of Isire.
But the you know, the lion shot lay down for lamb and so on.
Okay, okay, yeah, you're on the right there, you've got
the the wolf and the wolf and the and here the line of it.
And it's then this is just like a person that's with them, like the
child shall put a hand in the asps in the asps. Oh right,
okay, yeah, yeah, okay, I thought of that all right.
And also you've got dinosaurs eating grass there, so that you've got said,
no, yes, on the left there, you've got a tyrannosaur's rex eating
grass on the left there. Yeah. Yeah, to say that the dinosaurs,
they weired me out a little bit because I would have I would have
put dragons, is what I would have put into the dinosaurs. Well,
actually I can put one in for you, just for you, John,
Yeah, oh if you did that, if you put a dragon in there
just for me, I would be grateful forever. I shall put that in.
I'm putting notes down of everything I'm enjoying, so I'll change it overnia
round and I'll put a dragon. H And so tell us a bit about
about your your future plans, because you're in a new workshop now, you're
you're focusing on that, giving giving some trainings and anything. Maybe tell people
what you're up to beside this this particular image. Yeah, thank you.
Yes, I just moved to a larger studio because my two previous apprentices,
Jim Blackstone and Martin Earl, have moved down to Chichester. Now it's approached
by them two years ago the Anglican Cathedral to up and set up a liturgical
arts center. So it has two elements to it. One is to train
people to much higher standard, not just an icon paignting, but fresco and
carving that sort of thing. So so Jim and Martin are heading that.
But the second armor of the center is to also educate priests and decision makers
and as much to say anything, how to help them brief people like architects,
like if you're lucky enough to someone like Andrew Gold who knows what they're
doing, it's fine. But a lot of architects haven't done church work.
So a we're trying to get involved with seminaries, catholking and orthodox to I
suppose equip the decision maker is just with the main principles commissioning work. A
priest can't tell an architect, for example, or an I canogra for how
to do things, but at least I can say, this is the atmosphere,
this is the state of soul, this is how thelity operates. So
what you do has got to work liturgically and spiritually, basically how to give
a brief. So anyway, Martin and Jim have gone down there, So
that meant that I had space for more apprentices. So I love a young
man, twenty five year old man from New Zealand who's joined me a few
months ago, and then another is coming from New Zealand for shorter apprenticeship.
So yeah, and for those who don't know like that, been falling kind
of the whole story that the snow White book that we published with Heather Pollington,
uh, you know, beautiful, beautiful book. And now Heather is
studying with Aiden. It's been studying now with you for a few months now,
and I'm already seeing we're doing Rapunzel. Now we're doing the second book,
and and now that all the stylistic choices that she's making, and I
can see that she's mastering folds, and she's mastering certain elements of iconography that
you know, take takes some time to to to dive in, and she's
creating these beautiful bridges between kind of secular illustration and iconography. And so I
know that I have I have you to thank in in large part for that.
So I appreciate that I've been a real joy having Hit and I so
please that she'd began working with you, because it had been a vision of
hers to be a full time liturgical artist and it can be really hard to
find him opening, but things opened up very very quickly for her. And
I do go on with garments quite a lot of time with my students.
So Side won the three year part time icon course. Your face is not
easy, but it's all faces. More is the same, yeah, in
the sense that they got two eyes and nose of a mouth, But garments
drapery is so much more complex, so much a lot of work. So
I really sort of hammer it's got to be a certain logic to it that
we transfigured the world. We don't distort it. And I think a lot
of iconography it distorts folds, you know, it doesn't understanding. So I
think I really really labeled at some pleas that she's coming wrong, right.
I think that's definitely in your work. It's something that I really appreciate because
you can see that in late iconography, Russian iconography, especially at some point
the garments has become abstract shaped, which which is beautiful to some extent,
but somebody becomes almost disincarnated. And I think in some ways, even the
fact that that you started as a carver, you and and me also as
a as an icon carver, that the investments have to make sense because or
else you can't. You can't curve it if it's complete, If it's just
like lines and just abstract things, it looks horrible. And so there's desire
to kind of come back to something which like you said, is both makes
sense but has a transfigured element to it, And I think it's a it's
definitely definitely the way forward because you can't. At some point the abstraction just
falls apart and you you know, it's just disconnect with reality. So I
think it's a general principle of life, isn't it that when they find the
bond of this My spiritual father in Wales a blessed memory. He said that
if you want to know God, you must know this soil from which you
came first. If we try to link to higher things then will crash down
very quickly. So I think just understanding the laws and creation, like how
a branch comes out from a trunk for example. Basic things like that all
they should be embodied in the icon. Yes, I'm doing that. Some
interesting Frisco work, well silica paint of really rather than real fisco for apses,
So things seem to go through different phases. The a lot of appsidal
commissions at the moment, which is great I love because an apse wraps around
you, of course, and because some apps is in churches which probably won't
have scope for other work. You've got to say, a lot albeit with
hopefully with elegance in that one space. So that's why I go back to
these Roman apses where you've got Christ and a few cents, but also the
new Jerusalem indicated by Bethlehem and Jerusalem and often seet moving toward the center.
So that's like all of all of the faithful and time moving toward Christ.
Yeah, And I think your intuition about appses is one that I caught right
away when I started looking at your work, and I thought was the right
way to go. Because you see a lot of Orthodox churches end up in
either Catholic buildings or Anglican buildings, and so they don't have a dome,
and so then they want to kind of maintain the iconography of the Church of
the dome with the apps. So they'll end up putting the Virgin in the
apps. But then they don't know where to put Christ, and so they'll
they'll sometimes like like stick a like a flat disc, you know, at
the at the ceiling, and there's and it's like there's a there's a pretty
like a perfectly Orthodox solution to this problem, which is to understand the APPS
as a little microcosm of the whole church and to have Christ at the top.
Sometimes you can even have the Virgin underneath him, you know, you
see images of that. We have Christ and glory and then the Virgin with
child and the apostles. Like. There are different ways to do it where
you can capture all the same symbolism, not in the same scope, but
at least the essence of the same symbolism in the apps without without distorting your
architecture. You know, well, this is something, This is exactly what
I'm talking about, the need to educate priests, seminarians, anyone who makes
these sort of decision what you said, it is just the most basic thing.
Work with what you've got and don't try to make it something of the
descent. If it's a basilica, treated as a brisilica off a down chirt.
I didn't think it would require much time in the same to get these
things across, you know, to three days. You could even in a
day the three basic principles could be communicated. So I've been anyone's listening to
this podcast who can have influence in seminaries, please please, I beg of
you, you know, just just habit is not optional, but mandatory for
everyone in the seminary to have at least a day or two, not in
how depend icons at all, but just principles and you know, and ask
Jonathan and Andrew myself, you know, put down on two sides of a
way four the principles tape in mind. I'm beg of you out there.
We'll make a video for you and you could just show it to the students
of it like we'll do that. Yeah, all of you are listening,
and say'm glad to say Tacon's you know, all these American seminaries and the
European seminaries. Yeah, I think that's a great that's a great insight,
great insight. Well, Aidan, thank you so much. You know,
I always love talking to you and I cannot wait to see this image come
to fruition. You know, I'll once you have pictures of you working on
it, please send them to me and I'll also share them because I think
it's going to be a wonderful work, lovely good. I'm starting a Petreon
site and hopefully a few days mind because of your advice, so I'll be
putting updates on that as well. But I'll let you know all right,
this is a way to support Aiden's work. You know the iconographers, they
give their life to sacred art and give their life to the church, and
so we need to we definitely need to help them be able to do that,
and so I will definitely be checking out your Patreon as soon as it's
up, and I encourage everybody to go there. Thank you, love you,
sir so Jonathan, Thanks Ed. What's some inspiration? Hi? If
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