Nothingness Doesn’t Reflect
God
An Interview with Chicago Artist Daniel Mitsui
EGINA writer Meghan Cesar interviews Daniel Mitsui, a Chicago-based
Catholic artist, who supports his growing family creating Gothic religious artwork. Mitsui uses medieval materials to make timeless illustrations rich in symbolism, color, and Biblical truths. He believes it was the beauty and rich teachings in Gothic art that helped to convert him to the Faith and which can now help to convert our modern world.
REGINA: Your art is Catholic, but you were not raised Catholic.
Daniel: I seized upon the idea of being an artist as a profession as a teenager, and in college it become clear it was how I wanted to make a living. I wasn’t focused on religious artwork then; I wasn’t raised in an observant Catholic household, although my mother was nominally Catholic. I was not baptized as an infant, and had little religious formation. Religious art became my own interest as I had a medieval aesthetic even as a child with medieval style in books or films. But in college, I was trying to do more modern things.
I didn’t get my idea of what it meant to be Catholic from my family, rather, it was from but reading parts of the Bible on my own, learning Catholic Church history in school, and especially the religious artwork that I enjoyed. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I completed my sacraments and thought I should go back to my first love, specifically medieval art, most of which is of course religious.
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