All Creativity Builds On What Came Before...

"The student is not an isolated force. He belongs to a great brotherhood, bears great kinship to his kind. He takes and he gives. He benefits by taking and he benefits by giving." These words clarify a feeling I myself have not been able to put into words before. They are from a great American painter and philosopher Robert Henri. Particularly in iconography, where we are taught it is so important to paint in a certain stylized manner, it is easy to sometimes feel that we are only a link in a chain, with nothing new to give or offer. But, if one steps back from a particular teacher or a particular school, it is easy to see that icons can be the same and different at the same time. That there can be as many recipes for apple pie as there are bakers in the room. And that eventually, when you have baked enough pies, you will have a recipe of your own, and that is only your own. Not out of vanity, but by nature. And this is the marvel and the miracle of the thing. That we as human beings are alike and we are different. If we take the Gnostic view...we can work on ourselves as our own icons...and work to find God within ourselves. The icons we write outside ourselves can help to direct the icons we write within our interiors. Humility, contemplation, mercy, prayer...this inner icon will never be completed. But, we are in the brotherhood...helping you helps me.