Testimony of Marie-Hélène Coutable, a student at ATELIER SAINT JEAN DAMASCENE”!

Having joined the Orthodox Church over twenty-five years ago, Marie-Hélène and Yves Coutable soon began writing icons.

They explain what prompted them to do so, and talk frankly about the fruits of this work on their faith journey.

Marie-Julie Gascon : You both turned to Orthodoxy. When and why did you take this step?

Yves Coutable : We became Orthodox in 1998.

I was Roman Catholic, but I hadn't been practicing for a long time.

Marie-Hélène Coutable: I too was a Catholic, but I'd been disappointed by certain attitudes and answers to my questions. So we had distanced ourselves from the Church. At some point, we felt the need to rediscover meaning in our lives, so we looked to Buddhism and India, and read a lot...

One day, someone told us about an Orthodox priest.

We read some of his books, attended his lectures, and his teaching was an extraordinary discovery for us at the time.

Then, during a course, we were referred to another priest, a teacher at the Dumitru-Staniloae Institute of Orthodox Theology, who is still our spiritual father today.

He invited us to the Sunday liturgy he was presiding over, and we knew immediately that we were in the right place.

What touched you?

M.-H. C.: The chanting, the mystique of the celebration, the fervor of the people present. In Orthodox liturgy, you feel that God is there, that the saints are there, that the Mother of God is there.

Our spiritual father accompanied us, explaining what we didn't understand in the liturgy, in the fundamentals of theology...

We were starting from scratch.

How and why did you start writing icons?

M.-H. C.: One day, we went to the monastery of Saint-Hilaire-et-Saint-Jean-Damascène in Uchon, Burgundy. We were struck by the frescoes there.

We contacted the Atelier Saint-Jean-Damascène.

Father Nicolas Garrigou, at the time, advised us to start with the icons.

Y. C. : Icons enable us to learn the symbolism of faces, clothes, colors...

There's a whole apprenticeship involved: you start with a face of Christ, from the front and then from three-quarters up, you learn to paint hands and feet...

The darkest hues are applied first, then the light rises to the last touches of white.

In this way, we move from earth to light. Mineral or vegetable pigments and egg yolk are used. There's a lot to learn.

M.-H. C.: We also benefit from theological training that goes hand in hand with technique. Father Jean-Baptiste Garrigou, head of the Atelier Saint-Jean-Damascène, is our master iconographer.

What role does the icon play in Orthodox theology?

M.-H. C.: Its place in tradition is very ancient. The face of Christ was reproduced and the Mother of God painted as early as the time of the apostles.

It attests to the dogma of the Incarnation.

Icons value the human body and matter. Christ is God made man, he spoke, he made himself visible, he was touched.

"The life has been manifested, and we have seen it and bear witness to it", says Saint John in his first epistle.

The icon, like the Word, is revelation. The icon of a saint shows him transfigured, already in eternal life.

This is why the expression on the faces must not convey emotion or passion, nothing psychic.

Throughout history, particularly in the 8th century, the veneration of icons has been suspected of idolatry...

M.-H. C.: It's not idolatry: we don't adore icons, we venerate them.

In theology, the icon illustrates the mystery of divine energies through which the Holy Spirit transfigures and sanctifies matter.

But it is above all the person represented who is made truly present by the Spirit.

Faith in the real presence of God and the saints is fundamental.

For this reason, many saints suffered martyrdom defending icons during the iconoclastic period.

Y. C.: The saints in icons are "invisibly present". That's why we venerate them.

Before them, we make the sign of the cross, we prostrate ourselves, we kiss them, we look into their eyes.

The saint represented looks at the faithful, and this gaze is sometimes so strong that some find it hard to bear.

How do you choose which icon to make?

M.-H. C.: We often make icons at someone's request.

This creates a bond between us that I would describe as "eternal".

We pray for that person.

Or an inner call may invite us to work on a scene linked to a particular liturgical feast.

We may also feel called by a saint.

Yves and I got married religiously on a trip to Sinai.

We needed to find wedding rings, but there were none to be found.

We took a cab to the nearest grand hotel, and there, in a shop window, were only two wedding rings, and they were just the right size!

The ceremony was held on April 1st, which was a bit embarrassing for me.

So I looked up which saint was being celebrated on that day.

It was Saint Mary the Egyptian, a former prostitute who withdrew to the Sinai desert for forty years.

I immediately set about writing her icon.

What happens when an icon is finished? Is there a special ceremony?

Y. C. : Yes, the icon is consecrated with a magnificent prayer. In the midst of the people, the priest blesses and consecrates it.

But it's afterwards, through the veneration of the faithful who recognize their faith in it, that it takes on its full power.

M.-H. C.: Some icons heal.

Some shed tears, others give off a delicious perfume, a "smell of holiness".

You've been writing icons for over twenty years now.

What effect has this had on your life of faith?

Y. C.: For me, it's been a revelation to understand that the person you're painting is "invisibly present".

I'm talking to this present person.

Writing icons also helps us advance in our inner life.

We learn patience, abandonment and humility. The harder we try to make a beautiful icon, the less successful we become.

M.-H. C.: You have to let yourself be carried along by the Spirit, by God, by the saint you are making present.

But we're always confronted with technical problems, a color we can't find, our thoughts coming back again and again...

Icons require a form of spiritual combat.

When you start an icon, you have an idea in mind, but you're confronted with the reality of the material you're using, with yourself and your limits, and in the end it's the icon that decides.

I've spent two days of a workshop crying in my car because I couldn't achieve what I wanted.

When you start an icon, if you think it's a failure, can't you say to yourself: I'll throw it away and start again?

M.-H. C.: I once had a problem with the wooden board I was working on.

Each plank is primed with a glued canvas to prevent cracking, followed by some fifteen coats of filler sanded down to a very smooth, ivory-like texture.

When I started on the icon of Saint Silouane, a chemical reaction - too much glue in the plaster? - produced halos. I wanted to stop, but our teacher said, "Do you want to put it in the garbage can?"

So I finished it, despite the stains.

She's got a great presence now. Did you overcome your difficulties?

M.-H. C.: Little by little, by giving up trying to create a beautiful work of art, by learning to let go and let God work, by stopping work when I'm no longer sufficiently involved in prayer and true humility.

Humility is not an empty word for us.

Before beginning an icon, we pray Psalm 50, the psalm of repentance: "Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in your great tenderness, blot out my sin...".

Y. C.: This work requires a real abandonment of self, even if it does retain a certain amount of personal creativity, as long as it is in line with the Gospel: we don't reproduce icons identically.

As far as I'm concerned, I still can't manage to paint the looks. I still leave it to our teacher.

Is the gaze a special moment?

M.-H. C.: It's the look that gives life to the icon.

Many conditions are required to create a truly prayerful icon.

It's in prayer that we achieve this. As we work, we constantly recite the prayer of the heart: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us!"

Father Jean-Baptiste Garrigou tells of a small village of iconographic monks in Russia.

When a monk had to look at the face, he knocked on all the windows so that the whole village would fast that day. Writing an icon requires a certain asceticism.

Three reference books

Léonide Ouspensky, La Théologie de l'icône dans l'Église orthodoxe, Cerf, 2003, 530 p.

A major work, first published in 1960, by a great 20th-century Orthodox iconographer and theologian.Tania Velmans, L'Art de l'icône, Citadelles et Mazenod, 2013, 384 p.

A beautiful art and history book presenting the most beautiful Byzantine icons from the 6th to the 15th centuries, by a specialist and honorary research director at the CNRS.

Egon Sendler, Les Mystères du Christ : les icônes de la liturgie, Desclée de Brouwer, 2001, 320 p.

The feasts linked to the life of Christ and their interpretation in icons. By Father Sendler, Jesuit, Byzantine-rite hieromonk, iconographer and art historian.