About

My name is Mary Nisan, and I am a 22 year old Chaldean Catholic artist and Iconographer.

I started to get into art at a very early age, mostly because of how attracted I was to images, specifically religious artwork. I grew up going to a church filled with religious images and photographs of saints all around. I’m a visual person, so the artwork and photographs would help me focus and pray better. When I was around 13, almost all of the artwork and photographs from that church were removed for a more modern look, and it devastated me.

Around that age, I started to draw anime and comics after watching them with my classmates. It helped my skills as an artist grow much more, and drawing became something that I looked forward to. Then, when I entered High School, I started to use Charcoal and Oil Paint to create realistic portraits, in which I found a whole new purpose for loving art. I never really took any art classes until later on in High School, but at that point, learning the basics of how to use a grid or learning shading didn’t help me as much as my own experience and the videos on YouTube did.

My very first attempt at Iconography was for an Adoration Chapel, and it was a whole world of difference compared to my other works. It was like learning an entirely new language, because in all honesty, it was. It took many attempts and countless hours of videos to learn the rules of how to make a real Icon.

I believe that having love and understanding for Iconography makes you better as a person. This is because the love for an Icon is not based on worldly, outside appearance, but on inner truths that can only be understood if you put in the effort to learn about the Icon and its History. In a way, God is like this as well. Depictions of Christ torn and bloodied while staring back at you will make the worldly person uncomfortable and unable to see the beauty. However, the one who has studied Theology and has an understanding of what His wounds mean, will see the beauty in every scar.

I could not have imagined painting churches in my wildest dreams as a kid, and yet God has blessed me beyond comprehension. God likes to use the small and weak to do His work so that others will know that it is His work and not the work of someone else who is “knowledgeable”. Ornamenting churches is such beautiful work, and if done correctly, will lead the new generation to worship better and lead to a stronger relationship with God.

As for my current projects, I’m still doing work for a few churches and working on private commissions as well, but my main focus is to make Icons of Eastern saints that have yet to have Icons made in their honor. So please keep my work in your prayers.