Dear Friends,
So good to stay in one place!
No special events, no serious trips, just work!
In these three months we’ve been working in four different directions: – mosaics, iconography, some images on watercolor paper and copper. Besides, Olga dedicated some “free time” to purify some Lapis Lazzuli by recipe of Cennino Cennini (See the bottom of the page for a link to a good article about this fabulous substance).
And now…. almost time for the images 🙂 (Even though some will remain unpublished for a while)! But first – some practical workshop info.
AUSTRALIA – For those who registered for our 2 workshops in Melbourne: please, let us know if your circumstances change. We have some people on waiting lists and if you cancel before the 1-st of December we will be happy to make a full refund.
USA We finally announce our Advanced Icon Painting Workshop for June 2017 in the USA, – it’s Gage Academy of Art again (Seattle WA) and registration has already began: http://www.sacredmurals.com/icon-writing-course-seattle-wa.htm. Please, note, we have 10% discount for returning students! And make sure to let us know if you have any questions!
IMAGES!
First – most monumental ones: – in September we continued our work in St. Leonid church in Saint Petersburg region and covered altar table with tumbled glass mosaics: http://sacredmurals.com/mosaics-saint-leonid…
We used the same type of tumbled glass as on the wall, but this time we put tiles closer to each other to make surface more consistent. The colors and tones instead are more muted. The goal was to underline a special meaning of altar table in the church space, but not to make it too bright.
We have to be very careful about existing visual balance of the interior, bringing every new component in harmony with the image of the Mother of God and with the peacocks in the altar apse.
The next two steps should be the Royal and Diakonicon gates and the two main icons on both sides of the altar. We hope and pray God that the work in this church may be continued and brought to a harmonious but powerful result. This little church interior may become a great place for services and prayers in inner peace.
ICONS:
Just yesterday we discovered, that one of Olga’s icons has many times been exhibited but never published at the website. Here it finally is, – the Transfiguration, painted by Olga Shalamova in 2012:
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Philip’s icons are put in chronological order. The Nativity of Christ was painted last summer. As you see, the background is a kind of a blueish-grey, and the main color of the mountains has a similar hue, so somehow naturally we started to call this icon a “Winter Nativity”. We are sure most of our correspondents can easily identify it’s main model, but since the actual image is realized in a different technique and it is almost a meter high, Philip decided to make it in a more detailed way. By the way, we’ve uploaded it to “FineArtAmerica“, so, hope you might consider it as an option for your Christmas cards:
A 82 cm (33 inches high) Crucifix, commissioned almost two years ago by a little parish of prisoners in Perm’ region of Russia:
Icon Harrowing of Hell was made to have one more chance to “speak” about the Redemption. The previous version was good, but the new one is hopefully more powerful.
And the last image we present this time is icon of Annunciation. And also in this time it is a version of a “Blue Annunciation”, but this time Philip used some local mineral fluorite , which brought up such a wonderful color.
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This seems to be all for the moment, – yet no new conferences or exhibitions to share.
Thank you very time for your time and your interest to our Newsletter!
We look forward to publish more special things in the Christmas Issue……… 🙂
With warmest regards,
Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova
P.S. An article about lapis lazzuli by renowned authority David Margulies
And it’s the middle of August already! Started to put together the text and images for publishing… – it’s simply too much for a “Letter” in it’s usual form. What to do, we added WordPress module to our website, for our news to be cooked in a better oven.
