St. Augustine’s in-the-Woods Episcopal Church in Freeland will host a six-day intensive workshop in icon painting in February, conducted by faculty of New York’s Prosopon School of Iconology.
The workshop will be conducted from Feb. 25 through March 2.
The Prosopon School was founded by iconographer Vladislav Andrejev, who was born in 1938 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Andreyev received a formal education in fine art, then became interested in religious art, which led to solitary travels in parts of the Russian wilderness, and to independent study of icon and fresco painting with a monk icon-writer. He came to the United States in 1980
Andreyev will give a slide talk on icons and iconography at St. Augustine’s at 7:30 p.m. March 1. This event will be open to the public, with a free-will donation requested.
The course at St. Augustine will teach the ancient egg tempera technique of icon painting in the Byzantine-Russian tradition, which reached its height in the 15th and early 16th centuries.
Students will be taught all stages of preparation, including the horizontal “floating” technique of egg tempera.
As in antiquity, natural materials are used: wood panels gessoed with natural ground, genuine gold leaf applied by the bole method, egg tempera using ground pigments, and linseed oil finish.
The iconographic method is a multistep process in which the succession of steps is concrete and definite, as in the liturgical services of the church. Students are introduced to the iconology, and given explanations of iconic symbolism and the theological and philosophical basis of each step. No special artistic background is required.
Tuition for the six-day workshop is $510, plus a materials fee of $85 to cover brushes, palette, gessoed board, bole, four sheets of gold leaf, and shared pigments. Students will complete the Archangel Michael icon.
The deadline for registration is Jan. 25. For information contact Carole Hansen at (360) 321-2102 or e-mail mystic@
whidbey.com. The Prosopon School Web site is
www.prosoponschool.org.
