Knowing all of this, I had to decide what it was that I wanted to keep about this traditional practice of iconography and what I decided to toss I tried to keep as much as I could that would keep in the tradition of this format.

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     I decided to keep the names of the saints in as close as I can get to the ancient Greek.

     Solid color backgrounds for contemplation and not to distract from the main focus of the painting, and also to pick another color that might have something to do with the saint and their story.

     I still use wood bases and all the pieces that I use actually are repurposed wood. So they all had previous lives, either candle holders, cutting boards, anything like that. And many of those also have something to do with the saint that's portrayed.

     I also try to keep some of the poses and symbols that are used in traditional iconography. I do have a lot of references when I'm working on these of the traditional icons and religious paintings that have come before, and I do try to use some of those pieces from those as well in a more modern way.

     I also tried to leave some of the identifiable pieces of a person in these icons. So maybe maybe they had a wound in a certain area from a certain event. That's one example.

     I also decided to make sure that this is still a contemplative and prayerful process. I have a whole ritual of setting up any time that I create one of these icons, and the entire process is full of prayers, meditation, research on this saint, and who they were, maybe even following paths that don't seem super related but eventually lead around to something that is really inspiring for the piece.

     I also decided to continue to work in thin layers. This is because the acrylic paint that I originally used was just something that I had on hand while I was in school. That was all I had, and this was something really authentic to me, and the materials that I was able to afford.

The colors that I use also have meaning, and I decide to pick those ahead of time.

     I also choose to use a filyonka (border line) to make sure that this looks as much like a traditional icon as it possibly can.

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     But I did decide to get rid of the aspect of the people being expressionless. This is because, even though it is true that they did eventually overcome any problems, pain, temptations in life, they were real people for their whole lives before that, and being able to be reminded of that is something that I think is really powerful. Being able to see them with any type of facial expression that we can have, or experiencing any type of emotion or pain that we can. That's really powerful to remember how real they were.

     I also decided to, of course, toss their whitewashed, facial features and skin tones. So the images that we always have in our minds of icons come from European traditions, mostly because some of the more ancient ones were destroyed, and it was the medieval time period during which things started to become more regulated. As with everything colonization brought, especially to the Western world, it became the norm for all of our school curriculums and prestigious museums. Some of these European cultures whitewashed these people and changed their facial features either because they were a monk who was in isolation, and had never left the the monastery, and didn't know that other people existed that didn't look like him, or they honestly just wanted to relate more to Jesus and the saints by making them look like them.

     And you can still see this being done in other cultures around the world. You may see an image of Jesus or one of the saints looking definitely like they would not have historically looked. However, I decided to change that and make sure that in my practice they would look as close as they possibly could to what they would have actually looked like when they lived. I base this on people who now live in the area they lived in, what their family history was, any type of research that I can do. This is just the smallest thing I can contribute to try and undo that erasure and that harm, and also to just be more authentic. With the fact that our Church is so widespread and worldwide, the best way that we can picture Jesus and the saints looking like all of us is to actually portray them as they were.

     I also decided to toss their period clothing or robes. This was another aspect of making sure that they looked like they were in heaven. However, if you look at the history of icons, you'll see that even in recent images of more recent saints, sometimes they're still in these outfits.

And that does us a disservice in that we can't picture them looking like the people that we know, or ourselves even, and being able to see them looking like someone we might walk outside and see is another layer of being able to relate to these people, to understand how real they were, and how similar their struggles and triumphs were to ours.

     I also decided to get rid of the practice of erasing any imperfections of these people. While it may be helpful for a lot of people to know or believe that when they get to heaven they won't have to deal with any disabilities, or pain, or even a certain way that they look now. But that erases who these people really were. If we don't show that, it erases part of their story, and what they were able to do with their lives.

The last thing I decided to get rid of was automatically aging these people. While the thinness and wrinkles that I talked about mean to show asceticism in the earlier icons, it does certainly make these people look a lot older. The church is definitely lacking in imagery of the saints as younger people, especially because some of these saints didn't actually live long. We get another aspect of their story when we see them as younger. Sometimes some of them didn't have their conversions until they were older, or think about Christianity all until then, and so we can think about another aspect of their story. If we are looking for images of older saints, we have plenty of imagery of that already. The younger people who are looking for themselves and these people can find themselves in these icons.