Inside Northside Magazine's December/January 2005 Issue

Portraits of Souls

by Karen B. Gibbs

Three curious geese announce my arrival. Waddling in formation, they stretch their long necks skyward, honking “hello” or “go away”—I can’t decide which. As I climb the stairs to Sister Catherine Martin’s studio in Lacombe, I think that it is easy to see why an artist would choose this loft. At treetop level, overlooking a glistening pond and acres of tall pine trees, the “tree house” offers the perfect combination of tranquility, nature and inspiration.

The diminutive Carmelite nun welcomes me into her comfortable, well-organized studio. We walk past a pile of mat boards into the parlor. Several of her portraits smile at us. The detail is unbelievable: wisps of hair drawn perfectly, eyes so real you wait for them to blink. The people portrayed look so lifelike it would come as no surprise if they were to speak. Captivated by the portraits, I realize that Sr. Catherine does more than just draw—she captures the essence of her subjects. Her works are not just beautiful representations of people; they are portraits of their souls.

When I ask if there was a significant event that gave birth to this artist, Sr. Catherine responds without hesitation. With childlike excitement, she relates the story that obviously holds a special place in her heart’s memory. Her father, a commercial artist in Lafayette, had a small studio in the backyard. When Catherine was about three or four years old, she perched herself on a stool next to him and watched intently as he painted on a wall-size canvas. “He took a big paint brush, dipped it in the paint and slapped it on,” she says. “Then he took another color on a brush and slapped it on the canvas, too. He ran out of one color and went down the street to get more paint. He told me to wait right there for him. I thought that my poor dad worked so hard I would help him. So I picked up a big paintbrush, and slapped the paint on the canvas. As it ran, I picked up another color and slapped on more paint. I did this until I had painted the bottom of the canvas. Then I waited for Dad to come back. He walked in and looked at the canvas; then he looked at me. He looked back at the canvas, and he looked at me. Then he said, ‘That’s beautiful!’ I always think that was a beginning for me because that was an affirmation and something I never forgot.”

Her father’s encouragement came at another important milestone in Sr. Catherine’s life—when she decided to become a Carmelite nun. At the end of eighth grade, she entered the Carmelite Motherhouse in New Orleans. She kept up with her art in high school classes and by drawing chalk scenes for decorations in the community dining room. At 21, she made her final profession of vows, and, after college, began her 30-plus years as a teacher in several parochial grade schools in southern Louisiana.

It was at St. Joseph the Worker in Marrero that she began to see her art as something more than purely aesthetic. The pastor, Father Douglas Doussan, asked her to design the cover for the weekly bulletin. “It was a wonderful experience, realizing I could create a symbol that would speak the message of the gospel. [This] made me realize how much art can be a ministry,” she says.

At that same time, she became active in the Pax Christi peace movement and studied the lives of people of peace. Inspired by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, Sr. Catherine began work on what was to become her most famous portrait, “Prophets of Non-Violence.” To date, thousands of copies of the print have been sold at home and abroad.

Two other portraits created during this same period immortalized the martyrs of El Salvador: Archbishop Romero and four women missionaries. She studied their lives, as well as their photographs, and ultimately produced “Martyrs of El Salvador.” Twenty years later, while on a pilgrimage to the place where the martyrs were killed, she witnessed the ministry of her art firsthand. On the bus to the site, the pilgrims were handed prayer cards commemorating the martyrs. On the front was a print of her work. Sr. Catherine watched her fellow pilgrims gaze upon the faces she had portrayed. All were silent, but the wordless message was unmistakable: Her art had touched their hearts.

“This has happened many, many times,” Sr. Catherine says. “I see a connection between the gift God has given me and the ability to be able to share art in this way. I see it very much as a ministry.”

In 1993, Sr. Catherine became a full-time artist when she moved to the serenity of Carmel, the Carmelite residence on Fish Hatchery Road in Lacombe. Currently she has a two-year backlog of portrait commissions, several requests for logos, multiple orders for calligraphy work, as well as scheduled workshops. She is also on the staff of the newly opened Spirituality Center. Her “Art as Prayer” workshops are offered to those on retreat, as well as to the community at large.

In addition to these endeavors, Sr. Catherine writes icons. Having studied under two Russian iconographers and one in New Orleans, she has taken to this ancient art form like one of her geese to water. Her latest icon, “Mother of Tenderness,” was done using the classic egg yolk and natural pigments formula. The result is a work with colors of remarkable depth and variety.

“Depth” and “variety”—how perfectly these describe the artist herself. Whether it’s watercolor or calligraphy, bulletins or logos, icons or portraits, Sr. Catherine Martin reaches deep within herself and searches within her subject before she produces her art. “The common thread in all my art is that it represents something that has first touched my heart, something that is almost too deep for words. But it is so much in my heart, I have to express it.”

Not bad for someone who began her career by slapping paint on her father’s canvas. In fact, one just might say, “Catherine, that’s beautiful.”