Theology in color.
That’s how the Rev. Marek Visnovsky explains his unique form of art — iconography.
His talent for painting religious icons is what brought Marek and his family to America, where he is priest and administrator of St. Emilian Byzantine Catholic Church in Brunswick.
When one thinks of art, an image of something free form and unlike anything else comes to mind. Religious icons, on the other hand, follow strict, traditional forms, with as little deviation as possible. It’s intriguing to see that Marek is excited to share his art, a form which began about two centuries after the birth of Christ.
Marek Visnovsky was born in Slovakia, the third of five children. His father was a plumber and his mother a seamstress who risked taking their children to church in the then-communist country. “They might have lost their jobs or suffered other consequences for doing that,” he said. It was their hard work that allowed him and his siblings to go to college.
Marek started college majoring in math and science. “But I had thought about becoming a priest since I was a young boy,” he explained. “So, after two years, I transferred to seminary.” He has an older brother who is also a priest serving in Slovakia.
In 2000, in his final year of seminary, well-known iconographer Phil Zimmerman of New Florence, Pa. came to the Greek-Catholic Seminary in Presov to lecture and give classes. As a lifelong lover of art and painting, Marek attended. “I was the only guy of 30 students,” he said, “so I spent a lot of time with Mr. Zimmerman. We talked a lot — though my English wasn’t very good — and later he asked if I would come to the United States the next year to visit and study with him.”
He was given permission by his bishop to come in August 2001, on the condition he would visit Eastern Catholic churches while here. He lived with the Zimmerman family as he studied for six weeks and they were kind enough to take him to a number of parishes. All the time, he was getting a better grasp on his English.
Click here to read the entire story at cleveland.com. (Blog post)