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AMM FEATURED ARTIST

Atelier Omiros & La Galleria

Glimpsing Heaven in Bedford, NY and in The Vatican

By Susannah Leighton and Marlene Saile for Atelier Omiros & La Galleria

Have you ever seen God? That probably sounds like an odd question, but the-
ophany (when God, or a god, appears to a person) emerges large in our col-
lective human experience, is not an uncommon experience. From the burning
bush to the escapades of Zeus, from the visions of the holy mystics to the
serene smile of the Buddha, we humans want to see and know more of about
God, Heaven, and the Divine.
We want to believe there is more to reality than what our five senses can
reveal, so we tell and re-tell the stories of when we saw God, felt Heaven, or
experienced the Divine.
One of the most famous accounts of God, Heaven and the Divine comes
from the Synoptic Gospels: The Transfiguration of Jesus. Many of the world’s
great artists focused on portraying this most electrifying of mountain-top ex-
periences, yet among Fra Angelico, Bellini, Botticelli and others, the Vatican’s
masterpiece of this experience by Raphael stands alone.

Right, Raphael, The Transfiguration, oil on panel. 1516-20, Pinacoteca, Vatican
It is unusual for depicting tiered Biblical scenes in the same painting: the trans-
figuration of Christ floats in the upper section, while the Apostles helping a boy
suffering from demonic possession occupies the lower section. Raphael reveals Jesus transfigured, his face shining like the sun, his clothes
dazzling white. The entire upper portion of the painting glows with this glorious light from Heaven, which spills over and splashes down
onto the all-too-earthly scene unfolding at the base of Mount Tabor. Raphael forges ahead with an entirely new emphasis on expressive-
ness, creating a striking complexity of form and light. The confounded disciples, the gesticulating crowd, the fatigued and apprehensive
father who holds his afflicted boy, all coordinate into a heightened drama that was new to Biblical narrative in the High Renaissance.
For centuries, the Transfiguration captured the imagination and scholarly devotion of artists and critics alike. Eventually it fell out
of favor, and even the movements that replaced the High Renaissance gave way to modernism and the abstract tastes of the 20th
century. No one, it would seem, painted the classical stories of theophany anymore.
Then, along comes Omiros. Like Raphael (who apprenticed at eight years of age) and other titans, the sheer force of Omiros’
creative intelligence surfaced early. Despite being permanently blinded in his right eye, he learned to process the world around him
in a new and unique pictorial language. This language became his refractory way to speak in color, form and abstraction—his
own Figural Abstraction nested at the juncture and conjuncture of both.

In 1979, while simultaneously working on several periods, themes and series eager to communicate the Byzantine iconography of
the Greek Orthodox church, he hurled himself into representing—as did Fra Angelico, Bellini, Botticelli, Raphael and others—
the otherworldly God, Heaven and the Divine. And for the next 27 years he painted “The Byzantine.” Alive with brilliant color
and dynamic interaction, these compositions weave together a passion for the holy stories with a deep reverence for his medium.

Several of these heavenly paintings currently on view at Atelier Omiros & La Galleria compare strikingly with Raphael’s master-
piece. Omiros himself forges ahead with an entirely new emphasis on expressiveness, creating a striking complexity of abstraction
and figuration in form, color, and light, as can be seen with Paradise, The Martyrs and The Last Judgement.

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