Thursday, April 12, 2007

Icons

Did you know you can take a class for writing icons? I found this out while surfing the 'net one day. Apparently you can fly to Kentucky or some place and spend a week with a Russian woman who will teach you how to create your own paints with powdered pigments and egg yolks and attach linen to wood with hide glue. Then you learn the basics of making an icon.

I want to do it. I am not particularly artistic, but I am so drawn to the images I can imagine it must be wonderful to make them.

What would I make?

At first, maybe a single image, like John the Baptist, or Christ the Pantocrator. Or Mary.

But then, if I got good at it, I would like to paint Jesus' baptism.

3 comments:

Cathy said...

The priest at my church is an icon painter who teaches the same kinds of classes. He was trained by old icon painters like the one you mentioned and he is fairly traditional in his work, although he does use acrylics and other modern materials. He is a deeply spiritual person and I think that taking one of his classes would be a wonderful experience, not that I'm going to have time to do it anytime soon. I'm a little reluctant to post the URL of his website because I'm paranoid about identifying my church or the people I sometimes write about in public, but if you're interested you can email me at hope@wideningcircles.net and I'll send it to you.

Anonymous said...

Rachel,
ANTS offers this kind of thing now and again- did you kno they have a resident artist?! I will keep an eye out for the next "iconic" opportunity!

Amy

Rachel Nguyen said...

Thanks Amy,

Definitely let me know. Widening Circles has sent me some information about a class that will be coming to Ct. in November, but if there is something local, I would be delighted to check it out.

Dreaming of icons tonight....