My head is still full of impressions, observations, emotional states and ideas, following my return from the course I attended last week on ikon painting at the monastery of the Community of the Resurrection, in Mirfield.* No doubt it will take a long time to digest all of these. I will not attempt to communicate all of my responses in one message. In any case, I have no doubt that things will probably come into focus only over time.
When I was mowing the lawn this afternoon, after getting back home, I was thinking about the experience of the course, and the thing which really stood out for me was how incredibly fortunate we were with our tutor. Peter Murphy (of whom I had never heard before going to Mirfield) turns out to be one of the foremost ikon painters in the country, with an international reputation. He is extremely knowledgeable, both with respect to the techniques of painting but also their cultural background in general, and in particular the theological context in which ikons are to be understood.
I suppose that a measure of his ability as a teacher is that all nine of us returned home with a respectable piece of our own work, achieved under his instruction. Another indication is that several of the students had attended his courses in the past, and their enthusiasm and loyalty were very visible votes of confidence.
One feature odd Peter’s course which astonished me was the fact that we were made to work with absolutely top-quality materials. The boards we were each given as the foundation for our work were all hand-made in Serbia, from beautiful lime wood, and finished to a very high quality with multiple layers of gesso. We were taught gilding with proper gold leaf, and some of the mineral pigments used were evidently of astonishingly valuable minerals. There was no sense whatsoever of our being asked to work with “student-quality” materials. This was, in fact, a consideration of great significance. The background assumption here, I believe, was that an ikon is a valuable object of great significance, and it is only possible to communicate the sense of reverence with which it is to be regarded if, from the very beginning, it is created using materials which are valuable and with an investment of care and in a spirit of the utmost seriousness. The creation of an ikon, it seems, is not a task that is to be undertaken lightly, and this is communicated from the outset in the material used.
Peter’s work can be seen at: www.petermurphyicons. co.uk. I really recommend that you take a look at it. I will be posting an image of my own effort in the section of this website entitled “The picture of the month”.
*I know that the word is often spelled “icon” in English, but I prefer to use the “K” version. I suppose that the reason for this is that I first encountered ikons during my work visits to the former Yugoslavia and to Greece between 1968 and 2002. In both Greek and in the various Slav languages the “K” form is used, and any English translation derives from this. To write anything else, for me, just seems odd.