Iconographer vocation2/25/2023 “A friend of showed me his photograph and, as soon as I saw it, I thought ‘Oh my God! I have to do him.’ Technically it is an image since he’s not canonised. But Father Bill didn’t feel called in quite the same way as he was to paint Elijah McClain, a young black man who died in police custody in Colorado in 2019. Perhaps not surprisingly, there have been calls for Father Bill to create images of George Floyd, the 46-year-old African American killed during an arrest in Minneapolis, or of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American medical technician fatally shot by police officers in Louisville. They include over 80 portraits of the Mother and Child, icons of the ancient saints of history, and images of more contemporary figures who have often paid with their lives because of who they were or what they stood up for. Trained by the Russian-American master, Brother Robert Lentz, O.F.M., Father Bill has produced more than 300 mystical works of art, noted for their vivid hues and broad range of subjects. I’m trying to cause a metanoia or change of heart in the person looking at them.” “They’re really imploring and begging for compassion. “People often say icons seem sad to them but they’re not,” he points out. Now his icons and sacred images are commissioned by individuals, families, and churches across the globe. It’s been said that the vocation of an artist is to send light into the human heart and, over the course of 30 years, Father Bill has done just that, emerging as a leading international figure in his field. “There’s a childlike awe in being called to create along with the Holy Spirit,” explains Father William Hart McNichols as he works away in his “messy studio” in the New Mexican city of Albuquerque where he also serves as a priest for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
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