Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

George Makary

Three Saints

Iconography is a medium through which I can construct a liturgical vocabulary and a spiritual environment that corresponds to particular religious and personal behaviours among the Copts. Beyond that, however, it also equips them with an understanding of their history, the ancestors that preceded them, their visual tradition and culture, and an overall awareness of why they are set apart from the Western world and Western Christianity. It also provides an opportunity for external discourse on issues that may not be religious- colonialism and eurocentrism, indigeneity, politics, and so forth. However my interest in icons has and will continue to be that of divine exploration- plunging into the mysticism of the Church, its tradition, the concept of Light as a lens through which God can be examined and communicated with- an alternate reality, albeit a very valid and layered one. “If I take Tradition and move dynamically with it, I look, I think, I live!” (Isaac Fanous, 1999). Iconography and Tradition then is not merely an ancient art that I explore as an exploration of my history- but a means to build a trajectory into the future. However, I have been clear in forming boundaries between my iconography and secular work- the former to explore the intricacies of my existence, my spirituality, my innermost understandings of myself and my surroundings, while the latter explores my external surroundings, the things that affect my perception of my innermost ones. The two run parallel, hand in hand, and they support each other, but they do not mix, they are tesserae used in the completion of a mosaic that is none other than an autoportrait, but I do not create only for myself, but for my people and the people they live among and they, by extension, are also very much a part of that image of myself, and it is through this language of visual communication that I strive to push those surrounding me to understand themselves and critically examine their identities with my art in the same way that I have.