I also later experimented with the Macedonian style. We were just shown the technique for painting an icon in the Cretan style, so I took what I could from there and worked on it myself with the help of books. I did attend a few lessons at a parish, but they didn’t even teach the basics of sketching. Due to the pressure of studies, I didn’t have the time to dedicate to learning iconography. Before meeting him I’d had very little formal training in iconography, despite that being the original purpose of my coming to Greece. He also generously invited me to attend classes at the Centre of Orthodox Icon Painting Studies and Research Eikonourgia, where we were taught by a team of qualified and talented iconographers, led by Kordis himself. Hayes: I met George Kordis in 2008 when I was doing post graduate studies at the University of Athens where I attended both his practical classes and some of his theoretical classes on Theology of the Icon and Aesthetics of the Byzantine Icon. What do you consider the most important things you have learned from him? Gould: What was it like studying with George Kordis? Though your work is quite distinctively your own, I can nevertheless see a lot of Kordis’ influence in it. In 2005 I returned to Greece again for post-graduate studies in Liturgics.Ī. I returned to South Africa for two years where I worked as an iconographer and also presented talks on Orthodox Iconography and did catechetical work. But nearly a year after the priest had told me he would send me to Greece, he told me once again, but this time he said that I would be going for 5 years…to university… and I had one night to decide what I would study! There was only one thing that I had ever contemplated studying at university – theology! So I came to Greece in 1997 with a bursary and studied theology at the University of Athens. Where and how would a girl from South Africa study Orthodox Theology? I put the idea aside and forgot about it. And a crazy thought came to me – that I’d like to study theology, but that was impossible. It was a year before I eventually arrived in Greece, and during that time I did a lot of soul searching reading up about the Orthodox Faith. And that is where the adventure began! Just two days later a priest saw something I had drawn and said he’d send me to Greece for 6 months to learn iconography! In my despair I asked God why I could paint, why it was the thing I do best and what I was meant to do with it. In every spare moment I had I painted and about a year after leaving Photography school, I’d reached rock bottom and didn’t know what to do with my life. When I finished high school I studied photography which was my dream, but during my second year I had to stop my studies for economic reasons. Hayes: The thought of coming to Greece and studying here, let alone becoming an iconographer had actually never crossed my mind, and how all those things came about was nothing short of a miracle. Gould: How did you come to live and study there and how did you decide to pursue iconography as a serious vocation. So I’ve been Orthodox for most of my life.Ī. My family was Anglican but we left the Anglican Church back in 1985 and entered the Orthodox Church in 1987. Hayes: Andrew, I was already Orthodox when I came to Greece. Did you discover the Orthodox faith there? Gould: Julia, you were born in South Africa, but now you work in Greece. We asked to interview her and to share these images of her work that she might become better known to our readers.Ī. Her work is a truly wonderful example of creativity within tradition. Julia Bridget Hayes is a talented iconographer working in Greece.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |