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Darius Lesesne: A Catholic Artist

Darius Lesesne is a personal friend of mine and a fellow parishoner at our local Catholic Church. Darius is a convert to Catholicism and now produces Christian gift cards. Each card portrays a unique Christian historical figure as well as a quote or statement from the selected person. Darius has chosen such individuals as Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Charles de Foucauld, Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, Rich Mullins, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, and many others. Below is a piece written by Darius:

I tend to look upon myself as an artist in the traditional sense of that term--as one who "makes", rather than as one who "creates". An artist works with givens--the stuff of creation. The artist also recognized the givenness of his own being as "intellectual soul incarnate" (Marion Montgomery); and beyond this he is aware that he imitates his Creator in a highly significant way, namely, he makes things. If this work is beautiful, then God is praised, for phenomenal beauty invariably points to transcendent beauty, and hence to beauty's source, God Himself.

The artist, Andrew Lytle said, is not a special kind of man, but rather he is a special kind of craftsman. I am the latter--a maker of cards with ink and white paper. I often get asked, "Why are you learning Humanist Miniscule and Textura Prescisus?" or "Will people buy these cards?" First, a doctor practicing without bothering to learn anatomy is inconceivable--likewise, I must learn the "rhetoric" (de Rougemeont) of my own craft (which certainly includes historic caligraphic styles). Second, attached to the question about people buying cards is the implied one about "making any money". Both of these, Dorothy L. Sayers observed, should be reduced to the simplicity and pointedness of this question: "...are (these cards) useful things well made?" And, yes, you are quite right to think that it is you who must answer this simple question.

It must be said, furthermore, that any man's work, whatever it is, is the means by which he offers himself to God (D. Sayers)--I believe this. Moreover, artists offer the viewer beauty not as something which startles his mind like a stranger; no "the intelligence delights in the beautiful because in the beautiful it finds itself again and recognizes itself, and makes contact with its own light" (Jacques Maritain). Again Maritain affirms that when we experience beauty, we are left with a residue of longing for a more perfect Beauty.
- Darius Lecesne

Possum Cards.com

In Christ,
Joe