Charalambos Epaminonda

Mix art and religious dogma and the result is all too often good art with bad theology or good theology as bad art. Cypriot Icon-writer Charalambos Epaminonda achieves a masterful balance of faith and form in his painterly reflection on the doctrine of the Incarnation, Madonna of the Woods. A student of both theology and art, Charalambos presents us with a contemporary portrait of Mary and the Baby Jesus, radically different from traditional imagery of the Holy Mother and Child. Like shifting forms in a perspective picture puzzle, the central figures seem almost indistinguishable from their cubistic background of leaf and branch, fish and bird, wind-stirred forest and flowing water. The God-Become-Man and his Virgin Mother are part and parcel of the God-made universe. The Divine has come to dwell among all that has life and breath, bringing the promise of redemption and full fruition to a fallen planet. The usual iconographic colors of red and blue, representing earth and heaven, mix and mingle here with shades of gold in a scintillating palette of maroon and magenta, amber and aquamarine, lavender and lapis lazuli, cerise and cyan. Seeing this joyous image of the Madonna and Child, I think of the Apostle Paul's description in Romans 8:19-22 (NIV) of the whole creation"groaning as in the pains of childbirth," waiting "in eager anticipation for the sons of God to be revealed ...[so] that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage of decay and brought into the freedom of the children of God." For Artist-Theologian Epaminonda, the Incarnation is not just about saving humankind but restoring all God's good creation to its intended glory. (John Kohan)   

(From The Holy Bible: New International Version[NIV] (New York Bible Society International: 1973)