God’s Love in icons both large and small

 By Robert Hudson Westover

Who hasn’t turned the wheel of a kaleidoscope and looked in amazement as a hidden cluster of crystal beads, painted mirrors and glass create color patterns that make you wish you could jump into that little handheld toy? Of course, now we have virtual reality goggles which almost make one feel like they are doing this—diving us into a galaxy of iridescence--but virtual isn’t reality.

However, in Paris, the City of Light, such a place does exist, a real structure made of stone and glass but mostly stained glass. It’s the chapel built over 800 years ago by the good king of the French, Saint Louis, and the Parisians call it the saint’s chapel or Sainte Chappelle. From the moment you step into this sacred space of a million fragments of colored glass you are transfixed by the eye sensory overload of so much color.

Sainte Chapelle in Paris

You are in the kaleidoscope.

And it’s in this place of Holy wonderment that my husband and I had a rare encounter with a person who studies and creates, or I should correctly say, writes the spiritual arts of sacred colors that prefigured the glowing stained glass imagines of Biblical scenes seen in so many churches and cathedrals.

It’s called iconography and the artist’s name is Sue Jones. A devote Christian from Texas, Sue had never really liked icons and thought the (often) small rough wood blocks with two dimensional painted figures of Jesus and his mother, Mary (and many other saints) almost ugly and even kind of strange.

An icon of the Archangel Gabriel
by iconographer Sue Jones 

However, all that changed when she started visiting an icon “writing” class held at her church, “I started understanding the significance of the meaning behind icons. An icon is to be written, not painted, and read by the onlooker,” said Jones.

The class is called The School of Sacred Arts and the master iconographer leading the course, Jane Ladik, has her work all over the world. Jones explains the icon writing process taught to her by Ladik as one that starts with a pattern and the writer is always referring to the pattern, “just as we refer to our master pattern, Jesus Christ.”

Jones added, “Back in the day when people could not read, they would know what they were looking at, the colors have a message, and other things you see, curly hair, a knob on the forehead, even where the eyes are looking. Writing an icon is done in prayer, contemplating the life of the saint.”

In fact, when you see Mary, or the saints, it indeed does appear that the eyes are often not looking in the same place. Jones explains that this is because the icon both looks at the observer while also keeping an eye on the heavenly realm.

Listening to Sue that day in Sainte Chapelle, and feeling the holy spirit move me, I looked up at the many images of the stained glass and thought about the stories of faith they were telling and experienced the chapel with new eyes. Iconography, whether in wood, stone glass or paint inspires us all to love God more and experience the promise of his Love through art.

Let’s call it the kaleidoscope of the Holy Spirit.

(Pictured to the left: An ancient icon of Mary and Jesus. The lettering is in archaic Cyrillic and the icon is thought to have written anywhere between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.) 

A Dream in the Desert leads to an art career in Paris

By Robert Hudson Westover

The Joshua trees were darkly silhouetted against a faint yet deep shade of blue—a color James Purpura would never forget. When he woke up from the dream, in the desert outside Palm Springs, he didn’t know it at the time, but this hue of blue would haunt him beyond just a day of contemplating this unique vision.

He became obsessed with it and bought paints to mix and find it.

A new language of blue.

A new language of art.

A work by James Purpura. One of 13 that will be exhibited 
this November in Palm Springs.

Paris, 20 years later and my husband and I are walking the storied boulevard Rivoli on our way to the Louvre. We were in no rush, having been to the awe-inspiring former “other” palace home of the Sun King, when just a few blocks away, we spotted a rather strange looking building that stood out from the very well-kept limestone and marble facades of Rivoli.

I mean really stood out as in huge blue humanoid looking statues climbing up the façade.

Curious as he is my husband wanted to go for a closer inspection. He was utterly fascinated. I wasn’t. Just another weird art gallery, I thought as we entered the foyer of 59 Rivoli, a former hotel now covered in paint of multiple colors and a strange assortment of odd-looking art. Everywhere. As we ascended the stairs of the seven-story structure, we soon discovered that there were at least 30 artists of varying talent either displaying or creating their art.

As we looked at the amazing, contemplative and wonderous works I remembered one of the lessons I learned when I worked at the NationalEndowment for the Arts in Washington, DC: Every new great artist must distinguish themselves from the past and other artists. To break new ground, they need to speak a new language of art.

As we turned a tight corner in the maze-like complex, we stumbled on James Purpura’s studio and looked into colors in such placement as I have never seen before, an interpretation of reality both surreal and accurate and that blue. That Purpura blue.

Lucky for us James had just come back from an errand and we struck up a conversation. Somewhere in between James’ normal pitch to sell his art to us, and me being pulled into his alternate realties on canvas, I thought, “I not only want to buy one of his works, I want to help promote him.”

James Purpura's surreal take on the
Eiffel Tower in this painting is one of his most
well know works.

As a fulltime PR specialist, I was in no position to commit fulltime, but I went to work talking James up to anyone and everyone in the art world I happened upon. Then, when James was given the distinct honor of having his work displayed by the city of Paris in the 5th district across the street from the famed Pantheon I wrote a blog which has been viewed over 5000 times—for a yet-to-be, world-famous artist this is a big number. 

I know enough about art to know that James is the real thing. All I can say to those thinking of buying his work is to do it now. It won’t be long before the whole world knows about the dream in the desert.

An American Painting Music in Paris’s City Hall

James Purpura is emerging as one of the most profound and uniquely talented artists of a generation

Paris - For artists to distinguish themselves is never easy. To distinguish themselves in Paris is an altogether bigger deal. James Purpura, a native of Ohio, has done exactly that. Starting April 1 and ending on April 13 Purpura’s wide range of paintings, including landscapes, portraits and the fanciful, will be exhibited in one of the City of Lights most magnificent buildings the City Hall of Paris' 5^th Arrondissement.

A cityscape by Jame Purpura. (Used by permission.)

Purpura, who sees colors in music, an almost sixth sense called synesthesia, has also accomplished another rare feat among artists in that he has been able to translate this concomitant sense for the world to see. According to Purpura he sees colors in “Beats, instruments, layering, vocals, and lyrics can evoke certain colors and brush strokes, and pieces of music in an infinite number of ever-changing visuals.” His musical inspirations for painting includes classical, pop, transcendental, and remixes.

The artist's work is innovative and spontaneous, and never scripted. He likes to play with colors and lets them answer each other on the canvas. Often, characters such as animals and people begin to appear magically in the story and he will give them finishing touches to complete these characters.

A landscape by James Purpura. (Used by permission.)

“My approach gets people involved in the canvas as they lose themselves in color and the story on the canvas. It allows them to escape and ask ‘Why is the moon black? Why is the sun green? Why are there two suns? Why is there one sun but the reflection of seven?’ This is how I see. This is how I interpret the world.” said Purpura.

To learn more about James Purpura and his new exhibit in Paris visit: http://www.jamesmpurpura.com/

TAGS: Art, Paris, James Purpura, synesthesia

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