Posts by Jonathan Pageau
The Dragons that Almost Exist
Explaining the icon of St-George slaying the dragon to a 4 year old is amazing. Explaining the icon of St-George to a 10 year old is excruciating — “Yeah, but dragons don’t exist, do they?”. Do they? When someone tells you that dragons don’t exist or that monsters don’t exist, what is it they are…
Continue reading »Delicate Fluidity: The Icons of Anton and Ekatarina Daineko
Anton and Ekaterina Daineko are a married couple from Minsk, Belarus. Their work in panel icons and frescos stands out for its fluidity in drawing as well as its subtle use of color and highlight. As they are giving some master classes in Vermont this year, I thought it would be a good opportunity to…
Continue reading »Conference Celebrates Unity in Diversity of Orthodox Church Music
Minneapolis, Minn. – Participants from nearly every jurisdiction in North America attended the 2016 Pan-Orthodox Music Symposium held at the historic St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral here. “When we attend conferences and symposia, every once in a while you really feel like you are attending one that is truly special,” said Michael Lang, of Christ the…
Continue reading »Carving the Virgin Hodegetria
(Editor’s note: this article was written by Martin Earle, Aidan Hart’s studio assistant who worked to create a commission they received for a statue of the Hodogetria. Martin can be contacted at mart_earle@yahoo.co.uk. ) I always brace myself for a bit of anti-Catholic sentiment when meeting an Orthodox Christian for the first time. A convert myself, I…
Continue reading »Interview with Daniel Neculae
(Editor’s note: A few years ago we introduced our readers to the luscious work of Daniel Neculae, a Romanian iconographer now living in Luxembourg. Last year Daniel gave his first workshop in the US which was attended Marek Czarnecki, veteran American iconographer and teacher himself who agreed to conduct and edit this interview for us.)…
Continue reading »Sacred Space, Sacred Art and The Power of Women
We live in a confused time. Many of the basic foundations which hold the world together have been made fragile. Up/down, center/periphery, inside/outside have all been eroded in their power to frame existence as we watch floodwaters rise around us. One of the foundations systematically attacked through sophisticated rhetoric and political ideology is the complementary…
Continue reading »The Robot, the Mutant and The Artist
[1]One of the weaknesses in our vision of the world is that we tend to look at what surrounds us from one side of an opposition. This is inevitable as humanity’s existence unfolds like a wheel, waxing and waning, pulled by opposite forces from extreme to extreme. These extremes feed each other, call each other…
Continue reading »Fr. Philippe Péneaud: Romanesque Iconography Today
Fr. Philippe Péneaud is a priest for the Antiochian Orthodox Church and a prolific woodcarver living in the South of France. Having studied in the great tradition of European woodcarving with Raymond Labeyrie, he converted to Orthodoxy in the 1980s under the influence of Leonid Ouspensky’s “Theology of The Icon” as well as through the works of others…
Continue reading »The Rich Classicism of Fr. Ilie Bobaianu
Last year we posted an article about young Romanian iconographers creating traditional icons looking partially to modern art for elements to include in their work. With the spiritual renewal of Romania, there are also some wonderful iconographers exploring the rich strain of classicism in Byzantine icons. Fr. Ilie Bobaianu (Dantes) is a monk and iconographer who’s work shines particularly…
Continue reading »Review of “Icon As Communion” by George Kordis
As an Orthodox convert in search of traditional Christian images, as someone who fled the contemporary art world to find a home in liturgical art, George Kordis‘ iconography challenges me in so many ways. Kordis’ virtuosity is undeniable and his mannerism both of form and color refer all at once to Byzantine art and to Modern and…
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