'My Best Prayers'

Iona brother melds spirituality with a distinctive style of painting

By JOHN BURGER

Brother Kenneth Chapman, C.F.C., joined the Congregation of Christian Brothers so he could teach. But he found that his best teaching--and his best praying--often is done through his artwork.

Now settled at Iona College in New Rochelle, Brother Chapman paints in an unusual style and uses a technique that he has developed over the past 10 years. Most of the time, he does not know what he is going to paint when he sets out but lets the evolving texture of the painting suggest the subject matter. The results are intriguing works that invite the viewer to stand and meditate.

His style has evolved over the years from representational to abstract expressionism. Not only color is important to the work, but texture too, as in the deep ridges of his acrylic paintings. His more recent work consists of what he calls ink paintings, similar to watercolors. They suggest a combination of tie-dye shirts and windows etched by winter frost.

The 63-year-old brother is a friendly, soft-spoken, patient man, and early in his career that patience was much needed. His superiors told him that religious life and artistic pursuits were not compatible, and he had to settle for running art clubs in schools where he could not teach formal art classes.

When he was finally allowed to study for a master's degree in fine arts at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he made a personal vow "to paint solely for the glory of God."

His attraction to art dates to his childhood in Flushing, Queens, when at age 10 he contracted rheumatic fever. Bed-ridden for an entire year, he began making collages, and when he recovered he began taking art lessons. At 15, he was decorating the lobbies of local movie houses.

He attended the former Power Memorial High School in Manhattan, where the Irish Christian Brothers sparked his interest in religious life. He entered the congregation soon after his 17th birthday, received a bachelor's degree in English at Iona and taught English, Spanish, religious studies and mechanical drawing at St. Cecilia's School in Harlem, Iona Grammar School in New Rochelle and other schools.

He taught studio art at Brother Rice High School in Chicago in the 1960s and '70s and was superior of the brothers' community there. He then taught on an Indian reservation in southwestern Arizona and Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield, Mich. He was superior of the brothers' communities in these places and was a consultor to the superior of the Western American Province from 1974 to 1986.

He was invited to Iona as the Loftus Scholar/artist-in-residence in 1989, and after the year was over, then-president Brother John G. Driscoll, C.F.C., asked him to stay on. He teaches two art appreciation classes while doing his own work.

"I approach all art as sacred, whether it's a religious subject or a nature scene," he said in an interview. "It's a reflection of the beauty of God. The very act of creating is sacred: you imitate the Creator. I've always felt that's a tremendous privilege, especially when it touches people's souls. I've had so many experiences where I know it wasn't me but the Spirit working through my art."

He cites examples as proof. A woman who had lost her husband and father within a year of each other and was contemplating suicide saw one of his paintings of Mary at a friend's house and at a lecture he gave in a parish. "I felt all those thoughts drain out of me as I looked at it," she told him later.

And a young man, newly married, whose wife had died suddenly, stared for two days at his painting of the Resurrection, which was on display in the funeral home. He said to the funeral director later, "I don't know what it is, but that painting has carried me through these two days."

Brother Chapman's technique involves laying down a heavy, two-by-two foot compressed paper made of cloth fiber, layering coats of ink and applying sheets of plastic for 12 hours at a time to obtain texture. Waxed paper that has been crumpled and straightened is applied over a coat of wet ink, and the artist makes ridges from end to end. He then pours inks of various colors down those ridges, letting them flow into the capillaries formed by the crumpled waxed paper.

He has produced more than 450 works, and many are displayed in Christian Brother schools. A "Life of St. Joseph" graces the library of St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie. The six paintings were donated in 1997 by Joseph and Joann Murphy, Iona benefactors, in honor of the seminary's centennial.

"They're beautiful," said Father Anthony D. Sorgie, seminary vice rector and chairman of the Department of Sacred Music and Art. "They play with colors." They tell the life of St. Joseph in unusual ways; in the painting of finding Jesus in the temple, concentric circles suggest searching one's way through a maze, he added.

Father Sorgie said the paintings fit in well because their colors are complemented by the changing colors of the landscape, seen through large windows.

Some of Brother Chapman's favorite themes are the burning bush, Jacob's ladder, Jacob wrestling with the angel, birches and winter landscapes.

He likes using circles because the form suggests perfection and eternity.

"It's a wonderful shape to work with," he said. "So many things are circular: fruits, things connected with reproduction. And many of my paintings have to do with the beginning of life."

In seven panels called "Days of Creation," he represented Adam and Eve as two circles tumbling out of the "womb of God."

Images for these paintings often come from his prayer life, particularly from meditation on Scripture and other spiritual reading. One work shows Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, with an angel restraining the patriarch's hand. Not accidentally, the father and son are positioned as Mary and Christ, who was sacrificed, in the Pietà. Brother Chapman sees Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a foreshadowing of Jesus' death.

The circular shape again shows up in Stations of the Cross he painted for St. Mary's Chapel on Iona's campus, which he renovated. The tomb of Christ is oval, suggestive of an egg from which new life will come forth.

Taking a break from the hot garret in a brothers' residence at Iona where he paints, Brother Chapman thought back on the years since he became a brother.

"My spiritual development has come about through art, through meditation, through the creation of artworks and through conversation with others about my work," he said. "My best prayers are my paintings."