America’s first sanctioned female iconographer, Shirley Kontos, received her title in 1986 after encountering considerable hostility from the Orthodox clergy. She will be attending the Icon painting course in Lewes, Delaware . Mary Jane Miller is returning this year to another Icon Painting Workshop.
Women like Mary Jane are “holding the practice” and their contribution is important. The growing body of contemporary images is being produced in prayerful workshops all over America. Please sign up today.
Icon Painting workshop in Lewes, Delaware
“Windows to the Divine”
November 6th to 11th 2022
Enroll Now 400.00 USD
please contact Natalie Kerr phone (302) 329-9657 or (302)-645-8479
or email sewinsussex@gmail.com
Many women are contemporary icon painters today, keeping a tradition alive that stretches back 1,500 years. In the canon of approximately five hundred images from the Orthodox tradition, fourteen representations are women. This is changing. Icon painting courses reveal a mysterious and luminous art and prayer form using ground earth pigments. It is a visual language about God and its content flourishes when both genders are represented.
A way to draw attention to the beauty of the human spirit is through the icon. We do not intend the physical features of holy personages to be depicted as a naturalistic portrait. The goal is not to paint a perfect picture, but to reveal a perfect prayer. One stoke, a color or graceful line, distortions in perspective and proportions, all harmonize in one image, reflecting the fact we are beings created as expressions of the divine. Come to our icon painting course in Lewes, Delaware.
St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lewes, Delaware has commissioned
me to create
two classic and adored images; Christ, the Teacher and Mary of Tenderness.
The icons are large but are approached the same way we do in any Icon Painting course. I hope these icons offer a visual presence to provoke one to pause and reflect. These portraits of Mary and Jesus Icons are powerful and represent authorship from the Byzantine Orthodox tradition. Holy icons, when viewed quietly, have been and continue to invite spiritual awe and wonder, much like a stained glass window.
Even though the iconographic tradition allows individual styles and talents to emerge, the iconographer does not prize “creativity”. Despite this, human creativity pervades and seeps into these images. He or she seeks foremost to remain faithful to the liturgical-sacramental purpose and beauty of Orthodox iconography.
This Icon Painting Course offers an Unparalleled Opportunity to Reflect
One icon in each prayer corner will hang on either side of the chapel door below the altar. I began painting them just before Holy week, when Fr Jeffrey Ross was up to ears preparing for the Easter services. How he had time to focus on this commission leaves me with profound admiration.
BIO Mary Jane Miller. A self-taught Byzantine style iconographer for 3 decades, born in New York and living in Mexico full time. Her collections of sacred art are contemporary, with a proficient command of egg tempera. The work is extraordinarily rich in style and exhibited in museums and churches in both the United States and Mexico. As an author, Miller blends historical content and personal insights to arrive at contemporary conclusions about faith. BOOKS Mediation and iconography, Icon Painting Revealed, Mary in iconography, In Light of Women, and Life in Christ. Website: http://sacrediconretreat.com/
WORKSHOP sign up please contact Natalie Kerr phone (302) 329-9657 or email sewinsussex@gmail.com https://sanmiguelicons.com/
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