Holy Icon

"The White Christ Light," acrylic on gesso board, Bishop Maxim, 2024

Only those things we would like to see, such as that it emits light, Christ is the light, that the Saints saw the light, etc. However, let us see it as a portrait. It succeeds in the eyes with that instantaneous glance that looks at us and reads our heart, and we also read it as we would a friend. Because there is a harmony of love, mutual understanding, appreciation, respect, and mutual interest. We see it looking at us, and as we have said before, if it does not say something to you for a long time, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, if you keep looking at two eyes of a portrait, you cannot understand much about the expression. Now we keep looking, and the more we look, the more we understand that it is saying to me, “Stamati, my Stamati, my Stamati.” It looks as if it has not looked at anything else. An axis is created between the two glances: a line that leaves from me and goes to it and another that leaves from it and comes to me. I am not indifferent to it. Maybe you fell, maybe I am cornering you, maybe you do not feel free? Come, tell me, or in other words, pray, talk to me, and as I look at you, so I will listen to you. However, the listening, how much it is willing to listen to us, is not visible artistically. The glance is what is captured more easily and leaves very simply. Maximus’s lines in the hair, for example, have no hesitation. When you see white, and it has no hesitation, it either has absolute truth or, let us say, absolute certainty. However, here, it has no hesitation at all. How will they turn from the top of the parting downwards, and how will they straighten as they fall down as if, let us say, Maximus studied for a year or two in portraiture and learned some secrets to capture from teachers. He also managed to place lighting on the cheeks, eyelids, and the upper lids, red, which has a glowing orange.

To continue with the glance, it is not the eye; that is, we can’t say how we will make the eye look, outline it, or predefine it. Some charismatic works came out at the charismatic moment, as if they were whispers of the Holy Spirit at that moment in the painter’s heart, which he did not quite hear but left him something, and that something made him paint like this. As we look at it now, we do not get tired of looking at it; it does not bring us saturation. People who are not interested in us, people who are not interested in anyone, the glances of such people always bring us saturation if we look at them a lot. Our hearts cannot be reflected in their glance.

Consequently, in other words, Maximus was honored in his semi-education; that is, he had semi-education; you do not even know it well; he was honored in his semi-education to grasp what perhaps a small child grasps. That is, small children also grasp something without us understanding exactly how it happens, without their brain being so mature, yet they grasp some truths. I dream that there will come a moment in our church where we will light candles in front of such icons as a Christ in front, and as I was in the church inside the Monastery of Mount Athos, I would go and light candles towards this icon while it was with stippled gold, still space.

- Fr. Stamatis Skliris