Reprinted with permission of The Dallas Morning News

Iconography gave painter a new vision of the world and God
10/07/2000
By Jeffrey Weiss / The Dallas Morning News

With every layer of glue and paint and varnish, Vladimir Grigorenko is building a bridge to God. The bridge of faith has already carried him from the faith-challenged post-Soviet Ukraine to St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral in Dallas, where he is creating a series of religious images, or icons, for the new building.

For Orthodox Christianity, icons are more than pictures, and an iconographer is more than a painter.

"Iconography is not just a form of art," Mr. Grigorenko explained through a translator this week. "It's a form of service to God."

Mr. Grigorenko, 35, was a painter before he was a believer. The Ukraine of his childhood was part of the Soviet Union, filled with anti-faith propaganda. But after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Mr. Grigorenko was one of millions who were suddenly free to pursue their spiritual truth.

The painter was searching for ways to express that truth in his art. In his studies, he came across a traditional Orthodox iconography – a style of painting more than 800 years old that is neither abstract nor completely realistic.

Over several months, Mr. Grigorenko came to realize that, for him, the icon was uniquely connected to deeper reality. The former Soviet-trained engineer and secular painter discovered that he had become a Christian believer. And that he felt called to paint icons.

"The only way I could express my encounter with God was through iconography," he said.

Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism were both part of an undivided Christendom until a millennium ago, when they split, largely over the authority of the pope. The two traditions still have much in common, including the use of images in worship, but the veneration of icons occupies a more prominent place in Orthodoxy.

To the outsider, veneration may look like worship. It can include bowing before or even kissing the icon. But Orthodox believers draw a sharp distinction between veneration and worship.

A computer user works with an icon on a desktop in the same way that a believer approaches a religious icon. The computer icon is not actually the software, but clicking on it puts the user in touch with cybernetic power. The religious icon – the Greek word means image – is not actually Jesus, Mary or a saint. But for the believer, venerating the image is a way to tap into spiritual power.

Ukraine in 1990 wasn't exactly a welcoming place for a would-be iconographer. There were no local schools of iconography, no books. And one does not simply decide to go into this line of work.

An Orthodox iconographer must learn the church's many rules about what icons can and cannot look like.

In some religious art of the West, figures of faith are rendered with near-photographic detail or in bewildering abstraction. Icons cannot be too specific in appearance. And yet some details must be the same for all renderings of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a particular saint or martyr.

The baby Jesus, for instance, must not look like a baby. While the child held by Mary must be small, he must be proportioned like a tiny adult. This, Mr. Grigorenko explained, is a powerful visual signal that the icon is not merely a picture of an ordinary mother and child.

Iconographers also must learn myriad details of specific technique. Paints, for instance, must be made of ground semiprecious stones mixed with white wine and egg yolk – hardly a commercially available combination.

Mr. Grigorenko eventually went to Moscow, where he found books and instructors in iconography. But the iconographer's spiritual preparation is not the least of his work, so he also had to learn about his new faith.

"An iconographer must prepare for his art the same way a priest must prepare for his ecclesiastical duties," said Pavel (known to his American friends as Paul) Gavrilyuk, a Ukrainian physicist-turned-cleric who now lives in Dallas and who tracked down Mr. Grigorenko.

Mr. Gavrilyuk, a subdeacon at St. Seraphim and an instructor at Southern Methodist University, started his quest for an iconographer two years ago. The Oak Lawn parish, led by Archbishop Dmitri, was planning to replace its small building with a new cathedral. The church was founded in 1954 and has about 500 members.

Icons are as important to the spiritual design of an Orthodox church as support beams are to the architecture, so the selection of the iconographer was a matter of high importance.

Construction of the new church began in March 1999, and the first services were held there in July 2000. Part of the internal design of the church is an "icon screen." The intricate wood partition was built by Deacon Michael Storozhuk, a professional craftsman.

Fifteen large panels are set in the screen, which stands between the sanctuary, where the altar is, and the narthex, where the congregation stands. Each panel will eventually hold an icon.

By the time Dallas was searching for an iconographer, the Ukrainian painter had developed an international reputation. He'd created two full icon screens and assorted individual icons. And he worked in a 12th-century style that matches the architectural pattern of the new cathedral in Dallas.

Several iconographers in the United States and the former Soviet Union were considered for the work. Mr. Gavrilyuk met with Mr. Grigorenko in Ukraine and brought back sketches. Shortly thereafter, the church and the artist closed the deal.

Mr. Grigorenko arrived in Dallas in May. He left behind his wife and two small children, but they joined him in August. He had never been to the United States and spoke little English. He faced at least eleven months of work in a strange city in a strange country.

Amid the culture shock was a pleasant surprise, he said. Unlike many people back home, a high percentage of Americans take church life seriously.

"That was a great joy," he said.

The icon screen at St. Seraphim consists of two rows of images. Between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist in the upper row is a large panel that will show Christ enthroned, surrounded by angels and images of evangelists.

That's the image Mr. Grigorenko is working on this week. He started with a panel of imported Russian hardwood more than an inch thick. Using the traditional materials of iconography, the wood was first covered with glue and cloth. Mr. Grigorenko applied layer upon layer of a chalk mixture over the cloth, leaving a rock-hard white surface. Dozens of sheets of gold leaf adorn the edges of the image. Paint is also applied layer upon layer, a technique that creates an illusion of depth in the finished picture.

An unfinished figure of Jesus is seated inside a blue oval. Eventually, he will be enthroned on a rainbow, representing God's covenant with Noah.

The entire process will take about a month. Smaller panels take about two weeks.

Mr. Grigorenko shrugged when asked how long it would take to finish the whole screen. The technology of this style of painting is slow, and the inspiration of the iconographer – described as a collaboration with God – is not set by a clock or calendar.

But he hopes to complete the screen in February. After that, there's the now-blank white ceiling of the cathedral that needs to be covered in frescos. More images of Christ, the Virgin and the saints. More of what has been called "the Gospel for the illiterate" or "theology in color."

That will mean more time away from home. But he accepted the original challenge of working in Dallas without hesitation or reservation. It was, he said, the will of God.

"If God offered me to go to Africa to do iconography, I'd go to Africa," he said. "Abraham [the biblical patriarch] did not ask where he was to go."