Sara Miles
Posted in St. Gregory's Members Blog on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Last week iconographer Mark Dukes installed new panels of Dancing Saints, among them the musicians John Coltrane and William Byrd. Mark was remarking how different the new icons seemed to him stylistically from the first and subsequent saints he painted. It’s true that this is art made by living hands, not by mechanical reproduction, and the differences in Mark’s style over the years are noticeable. But what I notice is how all the dozens of figures are unified by the simple act of dancing. When we move in a circle, glancing up then glancing around, going in a circle past each saint, over and over, the whole icon breathes as one. It’s not art made to be looked at in isolation: it expresses community, even as the community dances below. Forward, back, forward, back, around and around, we experience “the whole harmony of that motion.”
