The saintly face of a painter: Ion Șinca

To describe the artist is an act of daring, of pride, and therefore a futility close to the sad attempt to describe God himself, ever. The echo of a bodiless shadow. A cry in the darkness of the Cosmos. The closed eyelid of a star, opened by the tender hand — vast as the Milky Way — of some giant. Just as divinity does not let itself be discovered, neither does its most subtle creation — the artist — let itself be discovered or told in any way at all.

As he completed his rite of passage, living over the hills and forests of the Pietriceaua of his memories, Ion Șinca's face grew more and more like the face of a saint painted on the icons of the little wooden churches of the old Romanian lands, the paint cracked and blackened by candle smoke, weeping with a divine wonder. He had nothing in common with bigotry or hermitage. He had the serenity and the unseen halo of light of the saints above his head. And he did not even know it. He shared his kindness, his gentleness, his generosity with the naturalness and joy of giving a crust of bread at a poor man's table. Being so, he loved all those around him in equal measure. He was not bold, not quarrelsome, not arrogant; he did not think himself a genius. He was rather shy, and held a precious sense of justice.

In every tree Ion Șinca painted a saint dwells; in every hill a little church lies hidden. Ion Șinca's houses are the keepers of ancient roots. Ion tried to tame us by offering us the state of a flower and by making his objects eternal, so that we might understand that only quiet and peace of soul can build. Through his eyes Ion Șinca offers us an opening toward holiness. With a little luck, we shall understand from his work that he was never a painter, that he did not depict images, did not immortalize landscapes, faces, objects or flowers. Refining himself down to the most delicate essences of the human spirit — in a blend of the soft perfume of a beautiful girl together with the smell of icon wood, of myrrh and of incense — his paintings slowly compose our book of humility and holy forgiveness.