Tradition Gives Way to Modern Art at Church

Michelangelo had his Sistine Chapel. Leonardo da Vinci his Last Supper. Now the artist Pascal has St. Vincent de Paul’s Church in Mission Hills.

Pascal, a Beverly Hills sculptor and painter, Tuesday was in the midst of applying the final strokes of paint to the last of nine oil-on-Lucite church windows, a project that has spanned two years.

For most of the last 12 days and nights, Pascal has labored to complete her work by Saturday when Tomas Cardinal O’Fiaich of Ireland will arrive to officiate at a 5:30 p.m. mass and dedication ceremony.

The impressionistic paintings are noteworthy for what they are not. Instead of traditional stained-glass (and expensive) church windows, Pascal has turned to a material that Renaissance painters could never have imagined: half-inch thick Lucite, a modern plastic tough enough to repel rocks.

Instead of traditional scenes of halo-adorned saints, Pascal painted scenes without any human figures. In their place Pascal put “God’s handiwork,” as depicted by brilliantly colored fields of flowers and wheat, running streams, a desert oasis, a sunset and a winter on the Montana range where she was born.

“I didn’t know them (the saints). I didn’t know what they looked like,” said Pascal, who for most of her 72 years has used only her last name. “I really felt I couldn’t do justice to people in long robes and halos.”

Her decision to leave out the traditional depictions often seen in Roman Catholic churches caused a minor stir in the 700-family parish.

“You don’t have to look up there (at the windows) to see a saint,” said Father Peter F. Mimnagh, the gregarious, white-haired, Irish-born pastor of the church and long time admirer of Pascal’s work. “I believe the saints are in the pews.”

Besides, Mimnagh said, what better example of God’s work than a flower?

Only a small segment of old-timers in the parish still seem reserved about the paintings. Younger parishioners have for the most part wholeheartedly embraced them, Mimnagh said.

Eight of the paintings replace plain, gray, opaque 9-by-4-foot windows.

The ninth is floor-to-ceiling painting behind the altar depicting an impressionistic version of the Crucifixion and resurrection. The 23-foot-tall painting takes the place of a column of blue tile that had resembled a huge shower stall.

Several of Pascal’s works already graced the church. Flanking both sides of the altar are two life-size stainless steel and glass angels. In the rectory there are several Pascal paintings and hand-chiseled glass sculptures, which are her speciality.

Pascal has practiced her art for 50 years. Her works are in places as diverse as the Vatican, the Longacres thoroughbred race track in Seattle and various corporation offices.

“I’ve done it all,” she said wearily but with confidence.

She drew on experience when she selected Lucite for the windows, but there was a problem. The plastic wouldn’t readily hold oil paint.

Pascal hit on a solution after experimenting several months. She wants to keep some of the solution secret, but revealed it includes using lamb’s wool and fan-shaped camel’s hair brushes.

While standing on a hydraulic platform 30 feet above the ground, and reaching out to apply the final touches, Pascal said her work is a personal “tour de force.”

Painting in a church is special and inspirational, she said, because of all the people coming in to pray. “You don’t want to offend that sensitivity, and I think about that when I’m painting,” Pascal said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.

As she rode the hydraulic lift up and down, getting off to check her painting from a distance, one could only wonder what Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling while on his back, would have thought.