Excerpts from “Experiencing Closeness to the Subject You Paint;

 an interview with a young American iconographer named Alypius Loft” 

an article by Jon M. Sweeney  

in the September-October 2025 issue of Living City

Your subjects are deeply religious.  Is the creating of art a religious process for you? And if so, how so?

Iconography is essential in the Orthodox Christian faith.  Following our liturgical calendar, we annually celebrate what is known as The Triumph of Orthodoxy.  This festal occasion commemorates the victory of Orthodox Christians against their heretical adversaries, the iconoclasts.

Iconoclasm means “image breaking/smashing” and was anathematized by the Seventh Ecumenical Council.  Iconoclasm is an amalgam of Christological heresies.  Those wishing to understand this better can read St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore the Studite.

The most important thing to understand is that Orthodox Christians believe that God’s assuming of humanity is what heals humanity.  Jesus Christ is God and, because God became man and subjected his uncircumscribable self to circumscription, he can be portrayed in line and color.   Iconography is about the deification of the human person though union with God in the Person, the God-Man, Jesus Christ.   Because Jesus lives in the saints – as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ – there is a sense in which painting the saints is equivalent to painting Jesus.  Painting Jesus is painting the Unseen God.

Iconography functions in this manner: the honor given to the image passes to the prototype.  When we have compassion on our neighbors, even if they’re our enemies in this world, the love passes to the image after which they were created,  Jesus Christ.  His material body is the prototype of all human bodies.  The resurrection ensures that we will be raised to life and inherit the qualities of his glorious body as our own partake of the divine nature.

This is all essential to Christianity and therefore essential to my work.  Every person depicted is a person who can be known.  I’ve experienced this in varying degrees, and I don’t have words to describe the experience beyond the word nearness.  There is an experience of the closeness of these persons to the heart – to the nous or intellect – that passes human understanding and reason.

This is amplified when I’m familiar with the saint, their life and works and words, and spend time asking for their prayers to depict their spiritual and heavenly visage truly.  The Spirit blows where he wishes – so I can’t say this experience can be reduced to a mere technique or discipline.  Sometimes I pray and I don’t have such experiences.   It’s as though there is only enough to keep me going and as the Lord sees fit for me to receive.  I want to stress as well that this is not unique to me.  Anyone who prays truly can have this experience of nearness, and much more besides.

Can you tell us about one of your favorite icons you’ve written?  How did it begin, what inspired it, and where does it currently live, and what does it mean?

It’s hard to say which icon has been my favorite to paint.   Perhaps this is cheating, but there are three works that stand out in terms of my experience with painting them, and how these experiences have further influenced my work at present.

Thie first is the icon of Saint John the Theologian in Silence.  I pushed the design and colors more in my approach to that icon than I had previously attempted, drawing from the color and design sensibilities of Richard Diebenkorn (“The American Matisse”).  This icon was painted spontaneously and purchased by a dear friend in my parish.  I’ve written in-depth about this icon on my Substack, “Saintly Folk.”   The image presents Saint John receiving the apocalyptic revelation of Jesus Christ’s second appearing from the cave on the isle of Patmos.  The one who is silent before God in prayer will hear his voice and know the cross they are called to carry in this life, and what steps must be taken to become a living shrine of God.   

The second icon is the icon of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Nations.   This icon was more a “return to form,” relying much more upon the traditional depiction of Saint Paul (large, elongated head; hooked nose; glassy eyes).   I painted this for an exhibit at Christ the King Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and it was purchased by someone there.   Relying upon the ancient models while seeking to work in a fresh way with this well-known saint was a very calming process. The reliance upon tradition eliminates the intense anxiety and unyielding self-scrutiny of hyper-individualism.  Though a simple portrait, the intention  - just as with all icons – is for the viewer to be drawn into communion with the saint.   Knowing Saint Paul on a personal level involves, in art, understanding the Scriptures he wrote.  His desire is for all people, of every nation, to become acceptable living sacrifices unto God. Acquiring this same desire, especially for themselves, is what I hope would be accomplished through this icon.

The third is the icon of Saint Symeon the God-Receiver.  He is the patron saint of my third son. I painted this icon in the month after he was born, but it was commissioned by a family in Texas who also named their son after the saint.   The experience of feeling my son’s fingers play with my beard while I caressed his exceedingly soft feet ended up being worked into the composition.  The Infant Christ has his hand in St. Symeon’s beard, and his feet resting on Saint Symeon’s hand.   This work further revealed to me how profoundly grounded Orthodox iconography and theology truly is, and yet the mystery of the Unknowable God who willed to be incarnate for us and our salvation continues to surpass human understanding.  Knowledge by the unknowing of pure experience and communion, Saint Simeon’s story is all about receiving God the way you would receive an infant.   You treasure that pure life, cradling it near your heart.   You don’t let anything rob that life.   This is how we should treat the grace of God received in the Eucharist.