The True Icon-Lettering done

Спас Нерукотво́рный 
I added the HOON (omicron, omega, and nu - 'He Who is') lettering today.
Makes a difference, I think.

Matthaüs Passion

Both familiar and ever new, St. Matthew Passion is a major event in the cycle of the year. Good for contemplation, very inspiring. The altus of the opening chorale "O Lamm Gottes" sang with an intensity that worked like gilding on a Russian Icon, or on a medieval polychrome statuette. It gave me goosebumps.

I noticed a Green Man carved in the church benches.



Vegetation Spirit-oncoming resurrection-how fitting.


Fraser-Golden Bough
Holland boys Choir - Pieter Jan Leusink
Martinikerk Groningen
Matthaüs Passion


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Reminiscences of childhood

It was a time when you could still park your car in front of the department store in the centre of town. No circular roads or circulation plans. Sunday afternoon, fivish, after dark. Return from a visit to our relatives in the southern part of town.
I used to look through the window of our Volkswagen Beetle. Neon signs, shop's windows, the church tower, statues.

Bronze statues.

The Big Nude Lass.

(My mother told me the locals called her so: t Grote Blote Wicht)

Their mother must be dead...

(I felt pity for them, every time we passed)

Is that a statue?

(It was, my dad told me)


But He looks so different there...

(a stern and grim Christ of the Sacred Heart, whitish sandstone)

Reminiscences of childhood. They have no order



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Gotov

Did the lettering today and applied a glare finish.
One eye changed colour in the process.


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Svet

Painting -or sculpting- has to be done in lost moments. Sometimes I have only a mere quarter of an hour, sometimes a little longer. This picture was taken after dark last night - while I sat musing on how to continue.


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Inspiration while at work

I do not need to hold a brush to be at work.


I am hooked on Russian icons and I am an atheist. The two do go together. While I do respect religions and people's religious feelings, mine is the observer's view.
I think dendrochronologic dating, dna research and a scientific approach might bust quite a myth or two, without diminishing the interest or fascination of the subject.


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Background and lettering

Made the background whiter today, but older paint layers are still visible - like a palimpsest. Lettering on an old sheet, to find out the right position. Did some work on the halo as well... Don't know if I should add lines to the cross' arms (see below).




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Old Church Slavonic

Meanwhile, I started decyphering the callicraphy on the Nerukotvornyi Icon and I got as far as
UBRO[S]' G[OSPO]D[INA] B[O]GA
SP[A]SA NASHEGO I[E?]SA KH[RISTU]SYA
which would mean something like
Image/icon of Jesus Christ, Our Lord God the Saviour
But I am not an expert in Church Slavonic, so I would welcome any comments.

That was yesterday. Found some other texts in a catalog of Early Printed Cyrillic Books today.
...gospoda nashego Isusa Khrista
...rozhdestva Gospoda Boga i spasa nashego Īsusa Khrista
In addition, closer inspection of a detailed scan revealed the reading UBRU[S]
Thus making
UBRU[S] G[OSPO]D[A] B[O]GA
SP[A]SA NASHEGO I[SU]SA KH[RI]STA

UBRUS/OUBROUS seems to denote 'towel' in OCS
according to Wiktionary
Or kerchief - a reference to the Mandylion



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Dancing Tzitziot

Fringes of the tallit (prayer shawl).



Or are they peyos



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Sad day - bad day

[text in progress]

They were playing Cinderella Rockefella in the department store, so I must have been about eight. My parents were probably buying a lamp or an electric hand mixer on the same floor. I was bored and I turned over the record sleeves. Matthäus Passion it read - but that was all foreign language to me. It was the painting that horrified me.

I still don't know what upset me more. The orange, poisonous colour of the blood, or the thorns all over the body, or the crossbeam bent under the weight of the dead body. He was dead, I could tell by the halfopen mouth. Was this really the same as the friendly young man in white, with his neat orange sash [orange it was, not red, on the stained glass window in our Lutheran church]? I could not believe it. And yet I felt it must be so. But he looked squalid and I sort of felt guilty noticing it. One could not tell where the thorns ended and the hair began. But long hair was squalid in those days anyway, at least when worn by men.


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crucifixion_Grunewald.jpg

One or two years before that, a slightly older boy living nearby, had told that God was Jesus' father. That did not really upset me. Jesus was the name of that baby which had something to do with Christmas Trees. Then another boy started discussing the death on the cross. And I imagined a little baby bundle tied to the midst of a cross. It was a concrete cross, the first boy said. And I imagined the washing line pole that my father got over his shin - he nearly fainted and my mother was almost in tears. Then they were talking about nails 'crossed' through the hands and I imagined a quincunx-like pattern. We were protestants and our part of the country was protestant. Crucifixes were a rarity.

My parents sent me to Sunday school, where I could ask all the questions that I wanted to ask. And the first visit was a hit. Jephta's daughter, but I did not fully understand why she was burned at the stake. Anyway I made a drawing of it.
We had to draw the pictures ourselves, we were not shown any.
Later, around Easter, I made a pencil drawing of the cross [cast in one piece, still concrete?] men holding Jesus, a hammer and a box of nails.

A children's anthology, published by the Dutch Labour Press, proved rather informative, with a crucifixion story after a combined version of the four gospels. And then there were Catholic families, with crucifixes in their living rooms. Since it was a strictly observed custom in the Netherlands to have all curtains opened [for honest people have nothing to hide], I could easily peep into some houses while on my way to school, to satisfy my curiosity.

What did Jesus look like?
I asked my mother how they knew.
She said that the artists had seen it with their inner eyes.
So.

[to be continued]

In 2012 I  went to see the Issenheim Altar in Colmar, France.
It was so huge and overwhelming.


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Trinity Sunday

Still, more than I had ever expected, in just three evenings.
[And I started on a second panel in the meantime]



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Pozolota

The Zagotovka (Preparation of the panel).
After applying the povoloka (from an old bedroom curtain), several layers of levkas (gesso)were applied, and sanded. The old sketching (see 30/04/2009) was lost in this process.
Today, Pentecost, it seemed the appropriate time to take the plunge and start sketching.
The new one, fortunately, turned out not too radically different from the old one. And again, this felt like a miracle.

Gilding (pozolota)
My budget spray can worked out well, and the sunlight did the rest.

Spas bo Voskrese



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Povoloka

What happens if you wipe a wet face with a towel and then make a negative?
This is the cloth the iconboard is to be lined with, but since it is meant for the "Not Painted By Hands Icon" there is that association with the Turin Shroud so I had to do this little experiment. And I gessoed the edges of the icon board as well.



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Action Painting

Acrilic Paint
Gesso
Varnish
Gold paint (spray can)
Brushes
Palette knives
I got everything for about €15 in the Action Shop.
Simple Living Rules!





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Spas nerukotvornyi

Or, the [Icon of the] Saviour Not-Made-By-Hands. I first saw this most impressive icon in the Uspensky Sobor(Cathedral of the Dormition) in the Moscow Kremlin in 1991.
It has been a favourite ever since, together with the Vladimirskaya and the Saviour of the Fiery Eye.



On this terrible day I found some peace of mind and some consolation in making a first sketch. The result was beyond all expectations. As if my hands had been guided. As if this face drew itself. As if theMan is Coming Around.





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Transformation

I took the sideboards of our IKEA bathroom cabinet and glued them together, on Tuesday evening.





On Wednesday morning I sawed them to the right dimensions, and added "sponki" to strengthen the board.




In the afternoon I cut out the indentation or kovcheg with a router, hammer and chisel and did lots of sandpapering. A thin coat of linseed oil was applied.



This is going to be an icon board.
Povoloka (cloth) and levkas (gesso) have not been applied yet.



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