December

Christmas 2024

Topics:
1. Christmas Greetings
2. Six New Icons
3. Courses: Old and New
4. Life News

Merry Christmas!!!

Dear Friend!,
It's the day when parallel realities come together once again, and we remember our fatherland — our Father’s paradise. To remind us of this place, during the rest of the year, we are allowed to see just a few fleeting glimpses, and one of them is iconography, where art meets faith. Yet, it's so rare that we can bear good fruit — there are always burdens and challenges that prevent us from being as good as we would like. Still, we continue trying, and this Christmas, we pray and hope that the wars may end and that we all may find solace.
...

Now, I will share some of our latest icons, followed by information about courses for summer and autumn, and then about the latest changes in our life.

2. NEW ICONS

The first three icons on the left were painted by Olga and the other 3 icons were painted by Philip.

3. COURSES

ONLINE
Our upcoming courses will go ahead as scheduled, - if you missed the Composition for Half Figure , it begins on January 2nd and an extensive introduction to Egg Tempera will start on January 09, 2025. Additionally, after completing my lectures on Theology of the Icon, I thought some of you might prefer a recorded version, without the need to connect to Zoom at specific times… Now it is available as a PDF with links to videos, - Takea look if you are interested in the theology and history of Christian Art of the First Millenium.

OFFLINE

Our in-person Courses at the New Skete (USA), scheduled for the end of April and May are also filling up as we expected, so now we are working on icon boards produced in Georgia to order them for the courses.

Additionally, about a week ago, we heard from Seriate School of Iconography (North of Italy) where we taught twice in the last 2 years. They said they want us to come and teach again, so we are now preparing two programs for their Italian students, scheduled for July 2025.

We were invited to use their facilities to offer an in-person course for English-speaking iconographers to study Italian Medieval Art “in situ”.

Italian Iconography School in Seriate, founded in 1978 by fr. Romano Scalfi and a french iconographer fr. Igor Sendler. The school operates under the umbrella of Russia Cristiana , an association, aiming to introduce the West to the spiritual, cultural and liturgical tradition of Russian Orthodoxy.

Seriate Iconography School hosts their own courses in summer, winter and springtime, so we have an opportunity to use their facilities in autumn.

Our course will feature a new format, designed not only to allow students to draw and paint in a XVI century Italian villa with a beautiful garden in а well organized iconography studio... We will have a few tours to visit several medieval churches with frescoes to see and personally experience them as fully as we can. Our students will be allowed to draw sketches in two XIII century churches, directly from medieval frescoes, right in their original context……

Villa Ambiveri Seriate We plan to begin with an Eastern-rite Catholic Mass on Sunday, October 18, and for most of the week we will study “in situ”, while for 2 or 3 days we will visit most special medieval frescoed churches in North Italy and finish our program on the following Sunday with another liturgy.

The villa Ambiveri is only 2.5 miles from Bergamo Airport, and just ½ mile from Seriate Train Station which makes it extremely convenient for transportation.

Soon after the New Year we will make a page with a more detailed program, for now we just would like to save the dates and invite you to think about this opportunity. If you like to be informed individually, we suggest you pay 1 cent ($0.01) so that we have your name registered:

Or just wait for our next newsletter.

4.LIFE NEWS

We never know where life will take us, and what we've learned is not to be too serious about personal plans. Planning online courses is easier, as now they all are uploaded, so the only thing we need is the internet and to have electricity for at least some hours a day. Planning in-person courses is more responsibility, as you have to be sure you can make it, and for us as citizens of Russia the main issue for years was getting visas to different countries. October was a great month as Georgia has approved Olga's Residence Permit, while November was not such a good one, as my residence permit was first approved, and then immediately cancelled with no explanations.

View from our window in Tbilisi Returning to Russia is not an option because waiting, for example, for an Italian visa would make me stay 1-3 months in Saint Petersburg, and I don’t like the idea of staying in a country where the state continuously introduces new restrictive laws and sanctions against own people and especially those who does not support the war. Here in Tbilisi we have unrestricted internet and we are sure that our workflow goes seamlessly, while Russian internet gets always more controlled and slowed down. Yesterday my aunt called me from Moscow, asking, how could she make Youtube work again as hers had stopped showing videos. Being an oil painter she used to work listening to podcasts, and 3 days ago the Russian government applied a final block on YouTube, so she could not listen to anything.

To have an opportunity to apply for European or U.S. visas outside of Russia, I went to Yerevan (Armenia), which is only 5 hours drive from Tbilisi and registered myself as an “individual Entrepreneur”, so on January 27, 2025 I plan to apply for Armenian Residence Permit. The best part of it is that we don't have to move to Armenia, - to obtain the Residence Permit one can just have the "business” registered there. This will allow us to continue to stay in Tbilisi. That's so relieving!

The only change some of you may have noticed is that the method we use to accept payments for our teaching has changed. Sadly, Paypal does not operate in Armenia and I had to find an alternative. The only reliable and transparent option working in Armenia seems to be Paypro Global. It was recommended to me by an Armenian company, helping me to register, and from what I read about it, it operates internationally and adheres to the highest standards of security. The odd side of this change is that it charges official taxes from our customers (which Paypal never did).

With Paypal the fees were all ours and our courses were priced equally for everyone everywhere. The new one (Paypro Global) acts as a so-called Merchant of record. it charges VAT (GST) and takes care of our clients' VAT (GST) obligations for them in their countries. Unlike Paypal, this platform allows however to freely choose the currency of the payment on top right of each payment page.

I wish we could avoid this, but I have a plan for obtaining a long term Italian visa, and to get it I need to show an official income.
...
We have not had any progress with the film about Svaneti as Alla is traveling, but after the New Year she will launch the process and we will share all the news. We also are waiting for it to come to life. Let's pray the work goes smoothly and steadily.

...

We are very glad that Olga's Christmas Book was ordered by several people in different countries and we were able to ship it in time. However, we discovered that since July 2024 Georgian Post has very high prices for little packages and does not even accept little packages for shipping to the US. Only large size packages, so from Georgia we can still ship our icons, but to ship Books we need to go to Armenia. So, next time I will go there about 25th of January, and if you order a book, I will be able to ship it to you at the end of January.
if you like to buy it right now, - you can use the button below to pay via Paypal:

Thank you for your invaluable support of all kinds!

With warmest wishes and gratitude,
Philip and Olga

P.S. If you missed our November Newsletter, here it is: The Self-Selling Art

Earlier Newsletters:

If you wish to subscribe our Newsletter and hear our news, Click here.