Posts Tagged ‘iconography’
The Byzantine Sculpture of Michael Lucas
The following is an interview with sculptor Michael Lucas. Mr. Lucas is an accomplished artist who currently focuses on Byzantine-inspired carving in stone. Andrew Gould is working with Michael on an ongoing project to build a baptistery in South Carolina. A. Gould: You started iconographic carving late in your life. Tell us about your background as an artist.…
Continue reading »A Year of Exploring Ancient Carving Through Drawing
For several years already, I had known in my heart and in my hands that I needed to spend more time drawing. Because the art of icon carving had become a lesser vehicle for the traditions of iconography, it seemed pressing for me to spend more time exploring the best examples of relief art and…
Continue reading »Local Colors of Conestoga: Woad Blue
This is post 1 of 1 in the series “Local Colors of Conestoga” Symeon van Donkelaar explores the meaning and methods of creating his own pigments from local material. I’ve wanted to write for a while about what I’ve learned about making local colors—especially from an iconographic perspective. With this year’s harvest of indigo blue…
Continue reading »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…
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