The workshop for icon painting

   As far as the practice of art is concerned, my choice is very restrictive. In spite of its extreme importance and daily presence in our house, I do not even mention music. Not everything is suited to the context of a Website. Never mind, that is the glory of the ephemeral. Thus, I limit myself here to two recent experiences that have added something new to my understanding and to my sensitivity, and have changed my vision of life:  the painting of icons on the one hand, and Chinese calligraphy on the other. These are two spiritual arts whose technique is the exact expression of the aim they strive for. At the first glance, they seem to be opposites: the icons have a static, hieratic and timeless character, calligraphy depends on movement and is attached to the instant. Nevertheless, they both centralize our forces and open us to a dimension that we do not reach by ordinary means, because it surpasses the limits of human perception.

   I met the Georgian painter, Historian of Art and Icon Restorer Nina Gamsachurdia, who lives in exile in  Switzerland, in 2004 during the exposition of her works at the Tonhalle in Zurich. These pictures, painted on wood with mineral pigments according to an age-old technique, but with a modern and completely original artistic language, impressed me powerfully. They convey a dream-like inwardness where joy and pain coexist and reinforce one another.

    I soon brought a small icon to Nina that I had bought in Bulgaria and that she restored magnificently. Since then, I have taken part in  three of her workshops in Basel. In sixteen to twenty days, for three to four hours a day, she teaches the participants icon making the way she learned it herself in a monastery in Georgia. There were from three to seven persons in the workshop. These were peaceful days where everybody did his best. People got to know and to like each other under her skilled and friendly guidance.

    Every time we started with a blank linden board, that we covered  during several days with a mixture of glue and chalk. We emerized it until it became even and shiny like marble. Then we traced the forms of the  picture and mixed the colours from mineral pigments, egg yolk and beer. In the making of icons, there is a dialectic relationship between form and colour. The drawing is entirely covered by three successive layers of paint, and each time one has to retrace the picture. Then one fixes the gold-leaves and at the end, the icon is varnished. The technique is meticulous and strict, but there is still room for free expression: even those participants who painted according to a same model came up with a different, personal, original icon.

    Once, during the first workshop, Nina said to me casually: “You’ll see, these icons have a strange power. The energy you put into their making will come back to you increased.” She was right.

Weblink to her personal website


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Encaustic painting

Encaustic painting is very old. It was the technique of the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt around 100-300 AD, and in early icons. Encaustic painting involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid is then applied to the prepared wood. This means you have to be fast, and sure of what you are doing: the wax dries on the spot, and does not support different layers. The workshops Nina organizes for encaustic painting last a whole day and are generally full of surprise and emotion…

 

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