Introduction

The icon is a window towards heaven, a window open towards the theo-cosmic reality, a lovely place where eyes meet eyes, a complex spiritual landscape where the longing of God co-operates with the longing of man. The face of Emmanuel (see the picture on the flyleaf) is the face of the God-man, a close-up of the Cosmic and Eternal one who became a human being to make man partaker of His eternal life, partaker of the divine nature. Saint John talks about this mystery in the prologue of his Gospel, words of giddying depth and beauty.

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. /.../ And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the Son from the Father.

Through the eyes of Emmanuel we look straight into heaven, into the heart of the eternal Father, to the depth of the Loved One, who made the material world in all its complexity and the man to His image (icon) and likeness. All this was made as a magnificent icon (image) of His beauty and wisdom, and man as His living self-portrait.

There is a cosmic Father and an eternal Son. The former is invisible and without any form. The latter has put on the shape of man: he has become one of us, one nature with mankind, without leaving His divine and unchangeable nature. It is this incarnate Son, the eternal Word, who became visible and obvious to open our hearts to the real beauty of life, who is the starting point of the art of icons.

The meaning of the Greek word eicon (icon) is image, in the sense image of God. Man is created in the image of God, an image, which the painted icon helps the onlooker to recognise in himself. The title Emmanuel means "God with us", the God who got the name Jesus, the incarnate God - our heavenly master and brother in sufferings and joy - who is "closer to man than man himself" (St. Augustine). With this God of flesh and bone before the eyes, my work as an icon painter begins.

But the real beginning of this art already took place when the Invisible One, the Great Artist, made His decision to create. With perfect power, from nothing to everything - ex nihilo, from nothing - He painted the cosmos without the help of colours, matter or substances. The cosmic beginning is a mystery, which we are unable to penetrate. Try, and you will soon find nothing but smoke coming out of your own ears, a disconsolate smoke coming from, in this case, to small a brain. It is he who was before the beginning who has invented all the forms and colours, the spiritual dynamics of human life, the light in the eyes of the endless row of personal portraits, which through history-painting, concentrated realism and poetical paraphrase is made present in the icons.

The icon-painter constantly reads the book of life, and as if the creation and life were a long love-letter from his beloved, he reads it carefully; he opens his eyes to the hidden meaning of truth behind the revealed. With the brush behind his ear, he walks in the foot-steps of the great Master of all, he takes part of the music of life, - the suffering and the joy - the grand symphony of spiritual experience, as it is revealed in the Holy Scripture, the Tradition of the Church and the History of the Saints.

Without any fear the artist also listens to his own heart - the meeting-place between the intentions of God and his own ambitions. Safely anchored in the tradition of his art, he rests his eyes on the beauty of which he himself is a part. And with his spiritual imagination and all skills and artistic inventiveness, that belong to this kind of figurative creativity and painting-technology, he answers the love-letter of God. By long hand and by the complex artistic means of expression which belong to this kind of art, he illustrates the real reality, the wisdom of God, which is more valuable than precious stones. In the art of icons the artist is in constant conversation with his Master, a conversation which began already when man was born, and which has continued through history and reached its fulfilment by the coming of the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth. It is the God-man Jesus and His friends, the spiritual kingdom which is present through time and space, that I am supposed to paint and supply to all kinds of spiritual contexts. This is also the reason why I now open this home-page. For the time being this is just to be looked at as a sketch. But hopefully it will develop into something more comprehensive later on.

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