Georgian Stone Carving
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September 2026: New Course on 3/4; Emotions in Iconography; Territory of Creativity

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In-Person Workshops

Dear Friends,

First, for those who have been asking about the possibility of studying with us in person in Australia: unfortunately, because of our move, we will not be holding in-person courses in Melbourne this year. We have made every possible effort to make it work, but it looks as though Melbourne will have to wait until January 2028.

Mandylion. Image of Christ-Not-Made-by-Human-Hands. Model for iconography workshop in the USA

Our next in-person courses will take place in May 2027 at New Skete, NY, USA. The first course starts on May 11, 2027, and the model is Mandylion, - "Image of Christ Not Made with Human hands". This course is made for beginners, and those iconographers who want to enjoy their time learning various methods of painting and drawing image of Christ from different models.

The second course starts on May 25, 2027 and the model is image of Saint John the Baptist. At this course we will study how to bring together several distinctive and highly expressive elements: the ascetic face, tousled hair and beard, the camel-hair garment, and regular clothing. While preserving the individual character of each of these elements, we also need to make them work together as parts of a unified composition. Registration is available through the New Skete website: Beginners register here and Advanced students register here.

In the meantime we also did some website updates. The website where we publish our work now has a simpler and clearer homepage, as well as a completely revised ABOUT section, with separate information about each of us and everything unnecessary removed. But the most important changes have been made to our course website.

HEAD IN THREE-QUARTER-VIEW

Head in Three-Quarter-View Course

We are thrilled to finally to announce registration for our Head in Three-Quarter View course!

The course starts soon after the New Year and will consist of two parts:

Structural Studies: February 11 – May 13, 2027
Icon Studies: June 3 – September 2, 2027

Online Drawing Course for Iconographers: Head in Three-Quarter View

This course is the final stage in our series of classes dedicated to drawing the head. It brings together and deepens the knowledge acquired in the previous courses, helping you develop a comprehensive understanding of the anatomy and structural principles of the head in icon painting.

We will study the skull in detail from frontal, profile, and three-quarter views. This will help you understand how to construct the head in a three-quarter view and give you greater confidence when working with different positions of the head. Particular attention will be given to the differences between classical and iconographic drawing. We will learn how to apply our knowledge of anatomy to iconographic practice while clearly understanding which departures from anatomical structure are possible and which are not.

The course consists of several thematic sections. Beginning with the study of the skull and the structural schemes of the head, we will then move on to iconographic references and gradually observe how these principles function in a specific icon. You will see why a particular line on an iconographic face is curved in a particular way and discover how profoundly the ancient masters understood anatomy.

By the end of the course, you will have a clear understanding of the structure of the head and the tools to draw it confidently in a three-quarter view and other rotations.
This course is open to students who have completed Frontal Face and Asymmetrical Faces.

Study Group Program

Registration is also still open for our Study Group program, which already has nine participants. It begins on October 8, 2026 and continues through May 6, 2027 with payments accepted for each month individually, so you can cancel at any momnent and continue from where you stopped next year. It's so far our favourite program, devoted to the slow, thoughtful process of painting a bust-length icon of Christ. You can see works from the 2023–2024 Study Group here. Students begin with preliminary sketches and finish with a completed icon. Along the way, they work on the different elements of the image, but, most importantly, they learn how to bring all these elements into harmony with one another, subordinating everything to the central goal: creating an expressive and unified image.

Paths and Resources

For those who have only recently become interested in icon painting and would like to know how to acquire the most fundamental skills without wasting time on mindless copying, we have also tried to make things a little easier.

Online Resources for Iconographers. Paths for Learning Iconography

On the Home page where all our courses are presented, we have now added suggested learning paths showing the order in which you can take the courses depending on your goals and experience.

There is also a new, easily accessible section with a selected bibliography and links to useful materials for icon painters. Appropriately enough, it is simply called RESOURCES.

And a small piece of news from our own life: a publishing house we have worked with for many years has printed Christmas cards featuring Olga’s icons. They can be ordered here and here. The sell packages x5 postcards in envelopes, and just check the size, - they seem to be smaller then regular postcards

Payment Methods Update

Once again we thank everyone who supportsed and continues to support us! We are now preparing for the move and hope to complete the process within the next few months. Some days ago we have finally managed to open a bank account in Italy, which means that we can now offer another option for course payments.

For our students in the United States it's Zelle transfers.

PayPal remains available as before.

New Payment Method on our Website

Our new preferred payment method is Revolut Pro, a system designed for self-employed professionals like us. Whenever possible, please use this payment method on our website by choosing the white button. A window will open asking you to enter your name, address and city. Once we receive your details, we will send you an invoice with a payment button, allowing you to choose whichever of the available payment methods is most convenient for you. By choosing this option, you help us reduce our transaction fees by approximately three times.

Emotions in Iconography

Now let's have a look at a special subject I wanted to talk about today, - "Emotions in iconography. Or, more precisely, their absence. Or, to be even more precise, the traditional restraint of emotions in icon painting.

This may sound strange, but I would venture to say that strong emotion in painting only really became sought after with the artists of the Renaissance. In traditional iconography—that is, in Early Christian and medieval Christian art—we do not see artists deliberately trying to provoke an emotional response in the viewer. Even when they show us terrible physical suffering, maternal love, or other powerful human experiences, they generally avoid those details that might push the viewer toward an emotional reaction to what is depicted.

Do Not Weep For Me, Mother

Medieval Christian art can sometimes seem almost entirely devoid of emotion. How can that be?

After all, emotion is one of the most powerful hooks we have for catching someone’s attention and drawing them into a particular narrative.

Emotions belong to such an ancient layer of our consciousness that they are activated before almost anything else. They affect us directly. An emotional impulse reaches us instantly—long before reason has had time to assess the situation, form a judgment, and decide on an appropriate course of action.

This direct access to our consciousness makes emotion an extraordinarily powerful instrument. Over the past three centuries it has been used by artists, actors, and writers, and for a little more than a century by photographers and filmmakers as well. We are accustomed to empathizing with characters and situations, immediately noticing anything that creates emotional involvement. Conversely, without that involvement, even the most striking photographs or posters can leave us indifferent.

And visual communication is hardly the only field built around emotion. Public speakers and influencers constantly use the same instrument to reach their audiences.

Moreover, many of our contemporaries and colleagues feel that if the icon is to become contemporary, it too must make use of this tool: it should address us emotionally, inviting us to show compassion, for example, or forcefully demonstrating that something is unacceptable.

And yet icon painters have traditionally avoided—and even now most of them continue to avoid—this readily available means of persuasion.

Why?

I would suggest that, consciously or unconsciously, this choice comes from the particular register of visual communication traditionally adopted by liturgical art.

An artist working on an image as part of the liturgy uses forms, lines, colors, tonal relationships, and all the other means of artistic expression according to the particular purposes that art serves within the Church. These are the purposes an artist keeps in mind when painting the walls of a church, laying mosaics, painting an icon, making liturgical objects, or carving ornament. Artists transform emotions in such a way that they do not distract us from the concentration of prayer. They turn them into deeper feelings, avoiding a response that, however powerful, would remain too immediate and too earthly. They present emotions to us in a transfigured form.

Neither in the services themselves nor in the passages of Scripture read during them do we normally encounter language intended to be emotionally harrowing—or even sentimental. It seems that similar unwritten limitations gradually developed in church art as well. Realizing this suddenly reminded me of something I encountered here in Georgia.

Supra by Niko Pirosmani

Georgia has an ancient culture of the supra, the shared festive meal. During a supra, everyone consciously enters a particular state of mind for the duration of the gathering. This is not a set of rules that children learn at school. It is a tradition passed from one generation to another, not least because the supra remains an integral—and very important—part of life here.

The time spent around the table together is a very particular kind of time. Perhaps you have seen the paintings of the nineteenth-century Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani depicting Georgian feasts. Shared meal is a time when people are not simply—or even primarily—occupied with eating. They enjoy the opportunity to be together and to talk to one another. Olga and I once attended a similar festive meal where former classmates were meeting one another for the first time after 55 years apart. For several hours, people spoke only about good things. They remembered only what was positive.

Someone might object that real life is not like that. But that is precisely the point. If, during a meal among friends, people are able to adopt a certain frame of mind so that nothing casts a shadow over the time they spend together, then perhaps the liturgical action—which itself grew out of a meal—came to follow a similar principle of selection, both in content and in form.

It would therefore make sense for artists working for the Church to accept certain limitations as well, and not to allow emotions expressed through images, objects, or words to disturb the overall concentrated character of the mystical event.

To involve a person too intensely during worship in any particular episode—whether represented visually or described in words—can become an obstacle to prayer.

At that point, an icon simply ceases to function as an icon. If, instead of helping a person gather their attention, an image scatters it and distracts them, it becomes a work of Christian art—or perhaps, more broadly, religious art. Not because there is necessarily anything wrong with it, but simply because it is doing something else. It is serving a different purpose.

So what, then, are the particular purposes of iconography?

THE TERRITORY OF CREATIVITY

Ideally, of course, we should organize an entire conference around that question.

For the moment, however, we have neither the time nor the energy to do that, so instead I would like to share an interview with Olga taken about a year ago.

It is entitled The Territory of Creativity, and I have now prepared both English and Italian versions.

And please write to us and tell us what else you would like to read about!

CHRISTMAS CARDS

Before I finish this message, I would like to share with you our selection of Christmas images for 2026, available as prints and Christmas cards. It is shown as a selection of fragments, each of which can be printed as a separate image, whichb may be a new and interesting shift. Enjoy:

Nativity
Nativity
Nativity
Nativity

Warmly,
Philip & Olga

P.S. If you missed our June Newsletter, it is here.
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