My purpose for creating this site is to share with my friends what I have been called to do and how it has affected me.
As I am entering my eightieth year, I decided to put this site together quickly and let others renovate and streamline the site for posterity. My sister recently suffered two major strokes which left her unable to use her communication skills effectively. It seems that now is the best time to do this, even though it is very primitive.
I don't really know how to operate this web program and so I'm just dragging and dropping the files. Please excuse the primitive nature of this site. I don't mean to be disrespectful to the subject matter, which is after all... God's story here on earth.
In 1994, I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma and had to go through a two-year chemotherapy treatment at Walter Reed. It was expected that my life would be shortened and so I decided to take up art as a therapy to relax and enjoy the remaining years I would have.
I started with watercolors and then acrylics and finally oil painting. But then, I saw a brochure for Russian Iconography and decided to take the 6-day intensive at St. Edmund's Retreat at Enders Island. After my first icon, I was madly in love with iconography. I knew it was what I needed to do. And so, I have this Divine disease and it drives me to do more and more.
It is a spiritual world and draws me closer to God and teaches me about life, love and service.
When I am writing an icon (we call it "writing" because we are telling a story in imagery), I feel that I am there at the scene, watching the event unfold and actually taking part in it.
In the Prosopon School, we start out with the Angels. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Then we go on to Saints and then Emmanuel (Logos: Word of God), Theotokos (Mother of God) and finally Christ.
In the advanced classes we write icons called "festal" icons that show the scenes of important events in the history of Christianity.