My tenure at St. Paul’s Church (Grand Parade) Halifax, NS involved, among other things, the renewing of a relationship with painting as I evolved out of nearly two decades of exclusive engagement with drawing and marking making. The process over nearly four years of exploring painting, and particularly a neo-abstract expressionism, involved my “transfiguration:” the result of the putting aside my ego to allow each painting (with varying degrees of success) to come into its own splendour and integrity, I too was being transfigured.
Particularly with the last of these paintings, a series titled Fragments of Glory, the influence is still felt of my first project when hired as Sexton at St. Paul’s in 2013. I began my care of the church by cleaning every stained glass window in the nave. I used only a finger wrapped in a shammy cloth, moistened with mineral water; it was a very intimate relationship that ensued with the windows. When working so close to the glass there was a disorientation and intoxication as their imagery fell away and I was immersed in abstract shapes of intense hues. Thinking theologically of our understanding of “icon” I see my paintings as icon-like, however, unlike the traditional interaction with icons, I hope the viewer senses being in the membrane/icon itself – as I do when I am absorbed in painting them – and therefore positioned in a liminal space, a thin space acted upon both the Created order and the Divine.
