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CHICAGO — For the sixth year, Father Marek Visnovsky led a 30-hour iconography class in the Greater Detroit area. His most recent class included 16 students, from teens to the elderly, at Old St. Patrick Roman Catholic Parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In his 18 years as an iconographer, Father Visnovsky has painted about 700 icons. He gives about four courses per year; 98 percent of his students are Roman Catholic.
“The interest is very high, especially in the western church,” he said.
Students “often comment on the stillness, beauty, simplicity and symbolism in an icon,” he said.
“They are flabbergasted that the icon is in parallel with the Gospel,” he said. “What draws them to iconography, I believe, is the beauty that puts one into something called ‘aesthetic rest.’ You look at an icon and all of a sudden you stop thinking and it literally makes you want to pray. For them, it’s something unique. It’s silence that cries out loud.”
He led the students in his most recent course, given June 11-15, in painting the icon of Christ the Good Shepherd.
“Many students experience peace” while they paint six to eight hours a day,” he said. “For some of them it’s a true retreat from daily craziness and worries. They find themselves in silence, being drawn back from everything and just focusing on God.”
He said his priesthood, and life itself, is like painting an icon: “not perfect, not complete, not finished, but believing that constantly working on it will come to the point of being in harmony with God.”
Caption: Father Marek Visnovsky poses with the students from his most recent iconography class, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Father Marek Visnovsky)
As published in Horizons, Nov. 11, 2018.
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