Jonathan Pageau

Jonathan Pageau is a French-Canadian icon carver, YouTuber and public speaker on symbolism, religion and the Orthodox faith. He is the editor of the Orthodox Arts Journal, the host of the Symbolic World blog and podcast and founder of Symbolic World Press.

Early life and education
Pageau's childhood was spent in Montreal, where he was strongly shaped by the dominant Catholic culture of that time. However, his family became Protestant, his father becoming as a pastor of their French Baptist Church.

Pageau attended the Painting and Drawing program at Concordia University in Montreal where he trained in Postmodern approaches to art, graduating with distinction. After graduating, he set up a studio, but became frustrated by the "aloofness about Contemporary Art" he was producing. He broke with contemporary art, discarding his work from the period. By his 20s, Pageau had moved to Africa with a Mennonite charity, spending four years in Congo and three years in Kenya.

Artistic career
Returning from Africa, Pageau chose to study Orthodox Theology and Iconology at the University of Sherbrooke. Iconography re-kindled Pageau's interest in art and, from 2003, he began specialising in carved iconography in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the art form for which he became known.

Conservative commentator Bradley Anderson has describe Pageau's iconographic work as a response to the "dead ends" of modernism, offering instead art that invites people into community "with reverence and humility." Writer Grayson Quay has described his work as initiating viewers into "the symbolic world" of myth, legend and Scripture.

In addition to creating religious artwork, he teaches seminars in wood carving and iconography. He began publishing online videos on spirituality, art and symbolism from 2017. From this time, Pageau has also begun appearing in podcasts with Canadian writer and psychologist Jordan Peterson; he has also collaborated with the American Catholic Bishop, Robert Barron. However, it his Youtube dialogues, most notably with Jordan Peterson where the psychologist appeared to have embraced faith, that have given him most prominence.

Pageau has exhibited his icons in several museums and exhibitions to Orthodox communities in North America. He has argued for a return to artistic treatments of Jesus of the early church. Rather than portraits which identified Christ with one ethnic or cultural group, the "goal was to help people encounter Jesus. If an Egyptian visited an Orthodox church in Norway … he would still recognize an icon of Jesus Christ. It would speak to him. There would be unity there."

Views
He has been seen as an advocate for a symbolic approach to the world, as well as to the Holy Scriptures. His concept of the "Symbolic World" holds that all of reality should be understood as a series of interlocking patterns which embody meaning. He argues that humans are innately religious, noting the practice of kneeling that has come with 21st century social activism. And that a religious view of the world, as embodied in the writings of the Church Fathers such as Saint Maximus the Confessor, is just as complex, structured, and comprehensive as any worldview founded on science.

Pageau believes his role as an artist is to explore “the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world.” He believes the world is intrinsically symbolic and is best navigated by the use of symbols. Some of his arguments about the atomisation of society have left some critics impressed, and others "uneasy" and unpersuaded.

Cracks in "cultural cohesion" have been a concern for Pageau. His observation is that Western culture has been returning to paganist patterns of thought, with social practices such as euthanasia, abortion, androgyny, some aspects of homosexuality. He describes state of the contemporary world as being "diabolic" in the literal sense, referring to the etymology of the word, derived from the Greek verb for "division". By contrast, Pageau believes the role of all art is to “unite opposites.” Many of these ideas are explored in Orthodox Arts Journal, where he sits on the editorial board and through his publishing house, Symbolic World Press.

Pageau's work on universal Biblical patterns has influenced others, including American educator David Mathwin. Mathwin argues children learn best when they are able to explore these patterns in the world around them.

Personal life
Pagueau lives in the city of his birth, Montreal, with his wife and three children. His brother, Matthieu, is a mathematician and computer scientist who writes about symbolic patterns in the book of Genesis.