Posted on 08/19/2019 6:43:56 PM PDT by marshmallow
A. Gould: How did you first set out to be an iconographer? What led to this decision, and what was your initial artistic training?
V. Grygorenko: I began painting icons long before my conversion to Christianity, which happened back in 1991. For nine years I studied traditional oil painting in the art studio at Dnipropetrovsk State University in Ukraine, along with my studies in mechanical engineering.
Even though I had a well-respected career in engineering prepared for me, I was thinking about becoming a professional artist. Before quitting my full-time job, I had to answer two important questions for myself, “What is beauty?” and “Why is art worth practicing?
Trying to answer these questions, I came across icons, which, being an atheist young man in an atheist country, I understood only as art objects. Initially, I researched iconography only as part of my studies of various spatial approaches in art, but eventually I came to the understanding that God is beauty, and the ultimate reason for the existence of art.
I was baptized in the Orthodox Church in 1991, amidst turmoil created by the collapsing Communist empire, and began my Christian life as an iconographer. There were absolutely no iconographers at that time to teach me, so I had to study on my own, learning traditional methods from rare books and from a few restorers in state museums. After a few years of self-study, I met Archimandrite Zenon in his remote skete near Pskov, and he taught me most of what I know.
A. Gould: How did you end up in Dallas?
V. Grygorenko: Late Archbishop +Dmitri of Dallas, of blessed memory, invited me to Dallas twenty years ago to work in the newly built St. Seraphim Cathedral. After finishing murals in that church and a......
(Excerpt) Read more at orthodoxartsjournal.org ...
Beautiful
He painted the icons for the dome at the parish I attend. The interviewer in the article designed the same church.
This is not a common skill and a “job” can take years. I suppose that if you are good, you could be booked deep into the next decade.
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