photo by Dorie Hagler

“To paint and to pray are the same thing.”          ~ Balthus

I met with William Hart McNichols, better known in Taos as Father Bill, on a gray Thursday morning  in his parish office at the San Francisco De Asis Church. We both arrived feeling sleepy from the heavy weather and drank hot coffee with sugar and powdered creamer while sunken in worn reclining chairs, surrounded by shelves of books, and images of saints hanging on the wooden plank walls. Like an apothecary searching his jars for the most potent remedies, Father Bill scanned the books, handed me one, and then another and yet another until I had a pile in my lap that consisted of biographies of feminist Edith Stein and poet Gerard Hopkins, translations of the works of Saint Teresa and Saint Gemma, cards of his own paintings of martyrs ranging from Polish solidarity leader Father Jerry Popieluszko to Austrian conscientious objector Frank Jagerstatter, and my very favorite; a collection of his iconography written by John Dear entitled You Will Be My Witnesses. Two and a half hours had passed and my tape recorder had long since clicked off before I reluctantly became aware of the passing time, and Father Bill walked me through the rain back to my car.

Father Bill has a low and soothing voice. With a tall, lanky frame and the bone structure of a model, he looks deceptively younger than his nearly sixty years. He is an academic, having studied art, philosophy, and theology at St. Louis University, Boston College, Boston University, and the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge.  He also studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and received a Master of Fine Arts in Landscape Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He became a Jesuit at the tender age of nineteen. In spite of his intellectual nature and his captivating speaking style, he communicates most clearly and movingly through his stunning Byzantine style iconography. (www.fatherbill.org)

“Icons change you from within because they are a prayer,” said Father Bill. “They will at times create an atmosphere inside you to receive something new from God.  They will plough the field, or get ready the ground… What you gaze at, you become.”

Father Bill came New Mexico to study iconography under the tutelage of Russian American master Robert Lentz, in 1990.  Like Lentz, Father Bill has endured criticism for painting images of uncanonized modern humanitarians, such as Princess Diana. “She was clearly a light,” he told me.

“I’ve had so many identities put on me, but the thing is I am many shades of gray…  I’m not an activist and I don’t think of myself as liberal or conservative. I’m always trying to balance.  I’m always looking for what’s missing…  I feel the spirit moving, and I want move with the spirit.”

He bemoans the Puritanical nature of American society. “The word liberal has been caged and closed and made negative. It’s like Fahrenheit 451. Part of Puritanism was destroying people by outing them.  It was a mob rules kind of mentality and it continues on in America… One of the reasons I ended up here in Taos is that it’s not Puritan here.”

Father Bill remained a Jesuit until shortly after he revealed his sexual orientation to Time magazine, in 2002. “It felt like a divorce,” he told me quietly of the dissolution of his thirty-four year “home” with the Jesuits.  Poignanty, perhaps, he feels the experience has made him a better priest. Because of his own experiences of being ostracized and of facing prejudice, he feels he can “extend a wing” to others who face discrimination.

Growing up in Denver, the son of Governor of Colorado Stephen McNichols and Marjorie Hart, Father Bill became accustomed to the notion of living in the public eye. “I never allow myself to be built up. I understand the rise and fall trajectory from politics. If I were to get up on a pedestal, I couldn’t do my work. I learned that from my dad.” He credits his mother, who had “a light inside of her,” with giving him both a strong sense of self and of domestic life.

He defines one of the highlights of his life as presenting Pope John Paul II, at World Youth Day in Denver, with his icon Our New Lady of Advent, now a permanent part of the Vatican Museum’s collection. “He had an aura!  He was accepting of me as a being…  I grew up in a political life and when you know that kind of life you can relate to those people who are trapped in it.”

Father Bill first came to the San Francisco de Asis parish in Ranchos in 1999 when he was commissioned to do a painting of Saint Francis for the famed church by Father Tim Martinez. “Taos is raw and unromantic – a harsh, not gentle, place. If you’re a romantic, you soon get slapped out of it here.  At the same time, Taos is really spiritual.” He realized he could better focus on his own art work in Taos than in New York.

While living in New York, Father Bill worked as an Aids chaplain, alongside Fr. Mychal Judges, the beloved New York City Firefighter chaplain killed at Ground Zero on 9/11.  Father Bill captured Mychal’s spirit in his image entitled Holy Passion Bearer Michael Judges. In the painting, Mychal holds out a veil above the burning towers, as if to envelop and protect all the victims. Father Bill described a “passion bearer” as one who “empties oneself of vengeance, purposefully choosing solidarity with the unprotected, the victims of injustice… the outcast.”  During his time in New York, he also illustrated over twenty children’s books.

“When I was five years old, my brother used to ask me ‘Are you still in your room coloring?’”He smiled at the recollection. “I’m still in my room coloring.”