Egle-Ekaterine Potamitis (2024)

18/04/2024

The Memory of Paradise

Have you ever wondered if it is possible that we still have memories from Paradise?
Ever since Adam and Eve were exiled from Paradise, there was this longing for what was lost, the closeness to God and Him, making us the stewards of the animal kingdom. With each generation, the comprehension of what was lost and the memory of this place of great beauty and peace diminished.
God permitted us to use any animal from the animal kingdom for any of our needs - food, clothes, guardians, and to be our beasts of burden, but this happened much later, in the times of Noah. So, eating meat or driving a cart does not remind us of Paradise.
But some things do: when we are around our pets, we are taken back into this beautiful garden where the animals, created by God, were friendly and obeyed us (that is, Adam) and looked at us with love and trust. So, our pets remind us, even to those who have forgotten that God exists, of this beautiful place and unconsciously serve to us as a time portal that is able to take us back to the place that we long for so much! Therefore, we have such a strong urge to own a pet! (Well, most of us.)
Of course, this feeling can be misused when we remove any memory of God from Paradise and place ourselves in His place, or even worse, the pets and other animals. We should be kind and caring and use the animals and nature wisely, but always with Christ as our Creator in our minds.

11/04/2024

Details and Feelings

Some time ago, I drew the Kursk root icon for one of our books, and it took me many, many, MANY hours (days actually) to finish it and, eventually, it will be just a thumbnail in the book 😆so I feel it’s a bit unfair for the sake of the artist (that is me). The reason I write this is to show you the amount of work that goes into creating a book that a child (maybe yours) will hopefully enjoy one day. ❤️
(I remembered this while making another complicated, multi-figured drawing of All Saints.)
Hopefully, one day, this detailed drawing, with all due honors, will be a part of a new book about the Wonderworking Kursk root icon of the Panagia!

10/04/2024

Children and the Harsh Scenes from the Lives of the Saints

When writing for children, it is essential to thoroughly think through how to present the events you are writing about to a child. The martyrdom of a saint is especially difficult. You don’t want to scare or shake the child. I still remember reading the martyrdom of Saint Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene, which left me shaken for days, and I was already a grown-up woman. I was sickened to my stomach reading the book about Serbian Newmartyr Vukic and what was done to him. Therefore, I am cautious of wording when writing for children, how much I want to disclose, and especially how to depict this. You will never find an explicit martyrdom scene in our books. Children can always read more and learn more when they grow up, but now, in their tender years, it is time to understand what motivated the saint to go through the harshest of the torments and not the details of it.
For several years, I refused (though we had a very persistent lady who wanted to commission one) to do a book about Saint Ephraim because of his torments. Then, finally, I thought of presenting his torture to the young readers in precisely this way, flipping the saint upside down and showing him victorious, in an upright, “normal” posture, and the world around him in an unnatural one. Notice the little birds surrounding the saint (i.e., innocent creations of God) are in the same position as Saint Ephraim, thus, as if confirming that the Saint is “in the right,” not the world around him.

05/04/2024

Stirrup Woes

When you have an expert of some kind in the family, you have to tread lightly while dealing with the subject of their knowledge. So, while writing or depicting historical events, which we do almost daily, we are cautious as our firstborn is a true history expert of ancient and, especially, Roman and Byzantine times. His knowledge of military events of these periods is vast and also must be contagious, as, now and then, he has heated historical discussions with his younger brothers.
Often, when I am drawing a saint of a specific historical period, I am scrutinized by his examining eye. Here, it lacks a particular type of armor; there is the wrong shield from another period. And I have to redo it again and again.
When we were preparing the fourth volume (April) of “My Synaxarion-A Saint For Every Day,” we decided to include Saint Derfel, a fascinating and important but less-known Celtic saint. There was no icon of him that I could use as a reference, so I had, with the help of the Lord, to draw his icon myself. As he was a warrior saint, I chose to depict him on horseback. Little did I know the lecture that was awaiting me for drawing Saint Derfel in a saddle with stirrups. Well, I learned a thing or two that day about the history of a saddle. The stirrups did not show up in Europe until much later and, to cut a long story short was one of the most important inventions in the history of the art of war, equal only to gunpowder. They provided balance and stability to the rider and the ability to use weapons with great force and accuracy. They were invented by the nomadic tribes in the Asian steppes and were gradually adopted by the Scythes and the Huns and then all the other nations that battled them.
So, I quietly redrew Saint Derfel and removed the stirrups from his saddle. Every year, on April 5, the feast of Saint Derfel, I fondly remember this story of the wrong saddle and the stirrups.
Blessed feast of Saint Derfel!

04/04/2024

Flowers on the way to Jerusalem

Now, with Great Lent rushing before our eyes and the Feast of Palm Sunday approaching faster than we can comprehend, this trail of thoughts seems appropriate to post here. I have been working lately on the icon of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. For the reference to draw, I was looking for the most suitable icon or fresco that I could get: the right facial expressions and the perfect composition. In my mind, I wanted to find one with lots of sweet children up in the trees, cutting off the branches and throwing them under the feet of Christ’s donkey c**t. There were a lot of icons, but just not the right one. And then, I found the depiction of the fresco from the Vatopedi Monastery of Mount Athos. It featured our Lord precisely as I needed for my work - the right angle, the right direct glance at the audience. No children in the trees though, but that’s ok; one cannot have it all.
It took a while to finish my work, and while working on the clothes and the branches strewn on the ground for the Lord, I also noticed tiny blue flowers thrown together with the branches. It surprised me at first, but ok, following the original, I also added tiny blue flowers to my drawing. They were cute, and it was a nice touch to the whole scene; most probably, they were being thrown by an innocent toddler to greet the Lord.
Only when I finished this scene I had a better look at the original fresco, and it struck me! Yes! The little naive toddler was me! These were not flowers! These were bullet holes in the fresco made by some anti-Christian soldiers from the bygone years! I was ready to erase the flowers from the scene, but then I thought - leave them, just as a reminder that through Christ, everything can become a beauty, even the trail of destruction! Exactly how Saint Olga of Alaska described it - “God can create great beauty out of complete desolation.” In God’s World, even the details are lovely!
So, if you notice tiny blue flowers in the scene of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem in one of our books, be not surprised! Rather enjoy them together with me and have them as a reminder of Our Lord’s power to heal and to turn everything into good and right. Blessed rest of Great Lent!

30/04/2023

Dear Friends, Parents and Teachers,
This announcement is long overdue and many of you already know that the series “My Synaxarion - A Saint For Every Day” is now COMPLETE, but maybe someone had no idea that such a wonderful resource exists and would like to have a closer look at it. So here it is - ALL TWELVE MONTHS ARE NOW AVAILABLE, Glory to God! Thank you all for your prayers, support and trust! We are working on a new project for the orthodox children, God willing, we will soon reveal it to you. The Synaxarion is available on our site Potamitis.us

Egle-Ekaterine Potamitis

18/04/2024

11/04/2024

10/04/2024

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04/04/2024

30/04/2023

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