A Dominican Icon Workshop – Fra Angelico Style!

As we commemorate the 8th Centenary of the Dies Natalis of Saint Dominic, we remember the prayerful and charitable spirit of Our Holy Father.  Saint Dominic had great filial love and fatherly care for the nuns as he often came to the monastery of nuns to teach and share the fruits of his contemplation.  Today, Dominican monasteries continue to be a place for the friars to visit and share with us their spiritual food, and to recuperate physically, spiritually, and emotionally in their life as contemplatives.  Thanks be to God; our monastery has been blessed throughout the years with the presence of the friars who are imbued with Saint Dominic’s spirit as they continue to carry on this tradition of our Holy Father.

This past summer, Providence brought us Father Dominic Joseph Bump, O.P. from the Province of Saint Joseph.  For the past three years, Father Dominic has been studying the art and theology of Fra Angelico.  With great enthusiasm, he came to our monastery and gifted us with an Icon Workshop based on the theology of Fra Angelico.  He taught us how to beautifully transform the fruits of our contemplative life into sacred art using oil painting techniques.

To kick off the icon workshop, Father Dominic gave us a conference on the theology of Mary and the saints.  We have recourse to Mary and the saints for assistance and instruction on how to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and spirit.  In Father’s own words, “Let the saints talk to you and teach you about God… The saints are the ones looking for us and there is something in our life that they want to teach us… a virtue that they want to impart to us… As we paint them, they will talk to us and teach us about God…. Pray unceasingly while painting, such as the Jesus prayer and the rosary.” 

After a day of meditating on Father Dominic’s words of wisdom, we were filled with great excitement and began with the Sacred Heart of Jesus as our first icon!  As we painted, we were encouraged to pray and remain in the Sacred Heart of Jesus; this disposed us to receive God’s love and consequently be able to bring His love to all.  This was an important lesson Father Dominic taught us since as a Dominican priest, Fra Angelico painted from the heart of his interior life, a life configured to Jesus Christ. "To paint Christ, one must live Christ."  This was a new adventure as we had not worked with oil paint medium or with gold gilding before.  

After we finished the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we painted Saint Dominic at the foot of the cross.  The cross was where Saint Dominic learned to talk to God so that he could go and talk about God. How appropriate that as daughters of Saint Dominic, we would do the same, to learn to talk to God first, then go out and talk about God!

In an age where we are constantly being bombarded with images through the various forms of communications, the true forms representing God’s Goodness, Beauty and Truth may be distorted or even lost.  We learned from Father Dominic that it is important for us as Sister preacheresses to share the fruits of our life of contemplation and speak of God through Sacred Art.  These beautiful and holy images are sacramentals which impart grace upon those who paint and those who venerate them. We are so grateful for all the blessings imparted on us from this retreat.

Deo Gratias!