Artist Bio
An iconographer’s vocation is to speak through beauty; and it is a wonderful topic. Ultimately an icon is meant to provide a picture of the whole world participating in the perfection with which it was originally created. To the audience, it should provide the strength of knowing how wondrously we are created and also provide hope of our return to that loveliness.
Then there are the materials used in such work: Wood and eggs; gold and pigments; clays, glues, chalks and oils. Each of these ingredients individually can represent a lifetime of study, but each becomes an instrument in the symphony of colour that is the end result: An icon.
Iconography vouches for the beauty of every person and it presents the wonder of the world that surrounds us but it whispers of something even more profound: It declares God’s Love. Iconography affirms the perfect Energies that radiate towards us by the Divine and invites our participation within them as we look at the individuals and events across the centuries that bear witness to this wondrous reality.
It is my great joy to humbly participate in this form of art.
The Craftsman’s Studio
Sunday, September 23, 2007
4:00 - 8:00
4:00 - 8:00
As a traditional iconographer, I see my studio as being something akin to an orchestra: All my collected bits of creation wait to be fine-tuned and then brought together into a beautiful composition. I have rocks from an old abandoned mine in Nova Scotia, a slabbed
poplar tree from a Mennonite lot here in Ontario and cow bones from Alberta (which will become ochre pigment, an icon panel and bone black). Tonight you are invited to come and see something beautiful: Bits of Canada, with stories behind them, crafted into the sacred art of the icon.
The Craftsman’s Studio is located at 1847 Sawmill Rd., Conestogo.
Chris vanDonkelaar is presented by the Homer Watson House & Gallery.
Digital Tour of this project on:
CAFKA APPROVED exhibitions are organized, programmed and funded by our cultural partners. These exhibitions run concurrently with CAFKA.07: Haptic and complement our own programming.
