Civilization.ca - Under the Sign of the Cross

About the Artist and His Work

About the Artist, H. C. Schlieper

Heiko Schlieper was born in Ontario in 1931, lived most of his life in Montreal and moved to Ottawa in 1982. Mr. Schlieper was educated as a historian, specializing in East European, Balkan and Byzantine history. He taught at a private school in Montreal, at the University of Ottawa and the Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean, and, for fifteen years, at McGill University, where he gave courses in the history of Eastern Europe. He has also lectured occasionally on the history of Soviet constitutional law in the Faculty of Law. He retired from academia in 1976 to devote himself full-time to Orthodox iconography.

Long drawn to Eastern Christianity, Schlieper was received into the Orthodox Church in 1983. He regards iconography as a three-fold path, involving the mastery of technical skills, a thorough knowledge of the theological foundation and historical development of the iconographic tradition, and the spiritual pilgrimage of the iconographer himself.

In over forty years, Schlieper has made hundreds of panel icons for use in churches and for personal devotions. In Ottawa, his sequence of twenty images showing the Passion of Our Lord may be seen in St. Matthew's Anglican Church. Apart from icons in private hands in many countries, his works are in the collections of the Patriachate of Moscow, the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria and the Metropolitanates of Kiev and Armenia. Both the Provincial Museum of Alberta and the Canadian Museum of Civilization have acquired examples of his work for their permanent collections.

Mr. Schlieper's major church works to date have been the decoration of the nave of St. Mary's (Pokrowa) Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toronto and the complete decoration of St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church in Edmonton.

Recent works also include a pair of large icons and a series of thirteen festal icons for inclusion in Anno Domini, an international bimillennial exhibition being mounted by the Provincial Museum of Alberta, with venues in Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe.

Currently, Mr. Schlieper is preparing a publication called Life of the Theotokos, an assemblage of some fifty historical images. He is also working towards a parallel Life of the Saviour, which will include more than a hundred and fifty iconographic compositions.

Mr. Schlieper has often appeared on television to talk about icons. He was recently the subject of a documentary aired on Vision TV and is at present taking part in another documentary for Radio-Canada.

Artist at Work at the Canadian Museum of Civilization

As part of the exhibition Under the Sign of the Cross, Heiko Schlieper will paint a mural-size icon of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, an image that commemorates Palm Sunday, one of the twelve major feast days of the Orthodox liturgical calendar. The methods used in the making of this icon are virtually the same as those used over the past 1,500 years, the only difference being in the construction of the panel itself. The iconographer will work from a small drawing he has made following an existing image. The original drawing is then enlarged directly onto the panel using a grid of proportional squares or onto a large sheet of paper where the refinement of lines can be achieved more easily. The back of the large image, known as a cartoon, is then rubbed with powdered red chalk and taped to the panel, and the drawing is traced onto the prepared surface. The fine lines of the tracing are then redrawn with a brush dipped into dark red paint. This is called the sinopia.

The next step is to gild the frame and background of the icon. Twenty-two carat gold leaf is used for two reasons. From a practical point of view, the gold does not tarnish, and it will retain its brilliance forever. The second reason is spiritual. Since it is outside the normal spectrum of colour, gold symbolizes the divine light that suffuses all Creation. The area to be gilded is painted with gold size. This size is a slow-drying varnish that takes several hours to reach the desired degree of tackiness so that it holds the gold leaf securely.

The painting is done with traditional egg tempera, pigments bound with a medium of egg yolk mixed with water. Only pure mineral pigments are used. These are derived from naturally coloured earths or clays and, sometimes, from finely powdered coloured stones. Only a few basic colours are needed — eight to ten at most. Mixing these in different ways will yield the spectrum of shades that is traditional in icon painting.

The last stage of the painting is the application of the assiste, a network of fine gold lines used to enhance the sanctity of the robes of a holy person or his immediate surroundings, or sometimes simply as a decorative effect.

A mural icon painted directly on a wall requires no further treatment. The tempera, being water-based, dries quickly, although it may take several months to harden fully as the oil in the egg yolk evaporates. Once hard, the paint is very durable. A panel icon, on other hand, may be handled a great deal and needs some protection. A coat of clear or white shellac gives protection against superficial abrasion and does not darken with age, and if repair of the icon becomes necessary, the shellac is easily removed with alcohol with no damage to the painted surface.

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