Posts Tagged ‘iconography’
Imagination, Expression, Icon…Pt. IV: Encountering the Internal Prototype
This is the 4th and last post in the series “Imagination, Expression, Icon: Reclaiming the Internal Prototype”: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. When you make an icon, do not copy it exactly… -Elder Sophrony[i] Now that we’ve clearly defined the terms nous, techne, Tradition, imagination and expression, we’re in a better…
Continue reading »Conserve or Restore? A Question of Ancestor Kisses
Conserve: To protect from loss or harm; to keep quantity and quality constant through physical or chemical reactions or evolutionary changes. Restore: To bring back into existence or use; to return to an original condition. Close in definition, the differences when applied to art treasures can be catastrophic. Consider the botched effort to “restore” Elías…
Continue reading »Notes on Method
St. Mamas of Caesarea by Fr. Silouan Justiniano. Egg tempera on wood, 46 in. x 31 in. One has to know technique, but one also needs to know art. An icon should be like a ‘painting’, like a prayer written with beautiful letters…There are many craftsmen, but few real iconographers. Make an icon, a…
Continue reading »Divine Patterns in the Life of Moses
This is post 2 of 2 in the series “Divine Patterns In Story and Image” Jonathan Pageau traces the patterns in Biblical stories and the Church Fathers, showing how they repeat themselves everywhere and act as a cosmic map. Divine Patterns in Story and Image pt.1 Divine Patterns in the Life of Moses Divine Patters…
Continue reading »The Transfiguration Secco for Lancaster University Catholic Chaplaincy
The Transfiguration Secco for Lancaster University Catholic Chaplaincy Early in March my assistant Martin Earle, myself, and a former student from the Diploma in Icon Painting that I teach, Fran Whiteside, completed a secco wall painting of the Transfiguration. It took us just twelve days compared to the twenty months we had just spent on…
Continue reading »A North American Master of Sacred Arts Program
The first person to ever write about my carvings was David Clayton, who at the time was blogging for New Liturgical Movement. Since then David and I have kept in contact as he wrote his first book and has now gone on to start the first Master’s Degree of Sacred Art program in North America. This…
Continue reading »Who Do You Say I Am? The Triumph of Orthodoxy
Holy icons act as signs that point to the immediacy of the depicted. The icons present to the beholder a way of being in relation with the signified. It is precisely this intimacy which many find troubling. The on-off Iconoclastic Controversy in New Rome on the Bosporus that spanned nearly a century (AD 726–87 and…
Continue reading »Making Art with an Axe
As we have just passed through the season of Theophany, I have been brought to ponder what Theophany means for art, especially liturgical art. The icon of Theophany offers much to reflect upon as we gaze at the elements it brings together. Just as in our lives and in the world, in the making of Christian…
Continue reading »Materiality Refined: The Carvings of Andrei Raileanu
Andre Raileanu is a young Romanian icon carver I have been keeping my eye on for a while now. We have already written a few articles on the amazing things happening in Romania ( here, here and here) but Raileanu’s exploration of stone carving stands very much on its own as both an exception and…
Continue reading »Interview With Nikola Sarić
Tell us a bit about your formative years; how you became interested in art and icon painting in particular. I grew up next to a talented father, so watching him painting was the first step towards art. When I was a child I was reading my father’s art books and I can still remember how…
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