Saturday Is For Art

Have you ever thought about the word icon? The dictionary gives five definitions or explanations of this word. Icon comes from the Greek word meaning to resemble. The dictionary gives its date as 1572. What new uses has this word acquired in the last 400 years? Here are the five listed in the dictionary: 1. pictorial representation: image 2. religious image painted on a small wooden panel and used in the devotions of eastern christians 3. object of uncritical devotion 4. emblem, symbol 5. a sign whose form suggests its meaning, a graphic symbol on a computer display screen that usually suggests the type of object represented or the purpose of an available function.

So, in the period of 400 years, the word icon has gone from a religious symbol of uncritical devotion to a secular symbol of what function is available on a computer. Artists use icons in their paintings and have for many years, and yet the dictionary does not even mention that artists created icons before there were computers. Street signs are icons that tell the motorist in one simple image that in seconds they are approaching a hairpin turn. The three-ball sign hanging outside a pawn shop is an icon. Icons can be political symbols such as the hammer and sickle of the former Soviet Union.

I paint icons of icons, and I even create my own icons. Today I will post a few pieces of art work that incorporates my use of icons.