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Religious iconographer Richard Christin creates the likeness of saints

BY LAUREN LAROCCA

llarocca@newspost.com

Staff photos by Katina Zentz Iconographer Richard Christin works on a piece of marble at his studio in Frederick on Nov. 1. Christin uses a number of mediums to create artwork of biblical figures and events.

Richard Christin was always drawn to art. As he put it, he was an only child and had to find ways to amuse himself. He would often draw.

But later in life, his artmaking became a vital role in his life, a part of his spiritual practice.

Growing up in a Swiss family in Maryland, Christin spent his summers in Switzerland, where he’d stay for three months at a time.

“I used to just hang around the cathedrals and look at the sculptures and architecture and ornamentation,” he said at his studio inside the Griffin Art Center in Frederick, rows of painted carvings of saints hanging behind him on the wall. “I just took it in.” As an adult, he created watercolors for a long time, seeing it as a “getaway” from the strictness of a career in architecture, he said.

While working with an architect in Georgetown in the late ’90s, he began taking classes at the Washington Studio School and learned how to create monotypes, then sculpt and eventually carve stone. His sculpture was figurative at the time, echoing the works he took in as a young boy staring at the walls and ceilings of cathedrals. The Basel cathedral in Basel, Switzerland, in particular, was one of his most cherished.

“The connection was complete then,” he recalled. “I was picking up on something I had seen and preserving this idea of telling stories in stone.”

In the midst of exploring sculpture, an awful (and sudden) divorce left him digging into spirituality and asking, “Is there something more I can draw on in a time of need?” he said. “I had put down my chisels and paintbrushes. [The divorce] had just devastated me. … But from that tragedy and that challenge, I came to Orthodox Christianity for solace … because I really had the need.”

He began attending an Orthodox church in Montgomery County and, shortly thereafter, found himself exploring the world of religious iconography.

“When I became Orthodox, I didn’t have in my mind this thought that, oh, I can become an iconographer!” he said. “But sometime after becoming Orthodox, it popped into my head: I’ve got to learn iconography.”

In 2009, he began researching religious iconography and took a workshop to study it further. When he returned home from the class, he said, he felt a tremendous desire to carve an icon of his own, even though he had never seen a carved icon at the time (eventually, he would see his first carved icon while browsing a Protestant coffee table book, he said).

“What I found was the more you learn about iconography, the less you know,” Christin said. “I’ve come to the place where, oddly enough, to me iconography is one of the greatest abstract arts there are. Now, there have been periods where it’s been very realistic, but overall, by and large, iconography has this abstract aspect to it. You’re trying to bring out the person of Christ, the person of the saints, because iconography is for prayer and engaging with your spiritual life.” Christin discusses one of his pieces at his studio.

Christin’s pieces include saints he’s been drawn to or inspired by, as well as religious figures he’s been asked to create.

Many of the saints we venerate and pay homage to today transmitted the faith through their personhood, he said, as Christianity was an oral tradition for many years.

“That personhood is what you’re trying to find [through iconography],” he said. “Who was St. Paul? St.

Nicholas? Who was Christ? You try to bring that out in an abstract way.”

This slow and tedious practice of depicting religious figures — from Jesus to Mary of Egypt — has become a part of Christin’s spiritual path.

He surrounds himself with iconography — at his workplace, at his home, his studio — which allow him moments of stillness in his daily life to pause and reflect on what’s important to him. They are there to “reorient your mind,” as he put it.

“Think about on the radio or the internet, you’re constantly seeing advertisements about some product or this or that — to keep it in your mind. This is just the spiritual equivalent of that,” he said.

“We don’t realize how noisy our world is,” Christin went on. “Through social media, news, all of that stuff, it’s very hard to find the voice of God. And the voice of God is in the weeds. That’s why a lot of people, when in nature, feel God, because it’s quiet out there. So one of the biggest challenges is finding that voice, finding that understanding.”

Though his pieces include traditional iconography elements, like gold leaf, nearly all of them also have a sculptural component, though Christin isn’t always certain ahead of time what he will or won’t include in a piece.

“When I start an icon, I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. I have an idea, but there’s something ‘other’ that happens,” he said. “I’m no great spiritual powerhouse, but I’ve seen it enough so I know it’s real. You just have to keep working until there’s a paint stroke or a brushstroke, and all of a sudden there’s a place where the saint you’re trying to depict is real. And you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m almost there.’”