Nothing Human Can Be Alien To Me

“If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody; if a human being dares to be Martin King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Malcolm X; if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born—it means so can you. And so you can try to stretch yourself so you can internalize, ‘Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto.’ I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me.’ That’s one thing I’m learning.” — Dr. Maya Angelou

Icon -- "I started painting icons in 2011 at the suggestion of dear brothers and sisters whom I lived with as a part of the Common Friars from 2009-2013. My brother and fellow farmer Paul Clever often posed the question, “how do we become people who, in Jesus’s words, ‘consider the lilies of the field?

This became the focus of my first icon entitled “Christ: Consider the Lilies.”

Iconography has since become a practice of more considerations: of color and light, of brush stroke and form, of placing myself in the patterns of the old images and yet making new images.

I do not wish to approach Iconography as simply a conviction created by inherited tradition, knowledge and practice but as an art and meditation that brings about new self knowledge for the viewer and myself. I feel the need for new images (new icons). In some icons I wish to embrace the traditional forms but for many icons the forms need re-shaping, re-imagining, and re-wondering.

I was not taught by a traditional Iconographer and I break many rules. However, I simply wish to be someone who ponders these people and stories writ with paint and brush as saunterings of spirituality, craft, and continuation of the ongoing  practice of considering lilies."

-Kelly Latimore