Iconography

Dates:	Monday, July 23 – Saturday, July 28 Participants arrive on Monday between 3:00 and 5:00 PM, and can depart after 9:00AM on July 28.
Program Cost:	$1,395 includes room, tuition, and meals

Learning the Best of the Catholic Artistic Tradition

Forty-five years ago, Pope Paul VI said to artists from around the world, “You are masters. It is your task, your mission, and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colors, forms—making them accessible.”

Through the Thomas More College’s Iconography summer program you can enter into this tradition of beauty that is so central in the Church. You will begin to learn the skills of a master painter giving you the ability to make the truth accessible through the beauty of your masterpieces.

During the week long course you will come to thoroughly understand how the theology and philosophy of the Church gives iconography its form and how that is reflected in its stylistic elements. After achieving some knowledge of the iconographic tradition, you will be instructed in creating them: drawing the icon, transferring the drawing to a panel, making the paint with pigment and egg yolk, and finally, the painting process itself.

As icons are religious art, the process of creating them is not only artistic, but also spiritual. Icons, when worthy of veneration, are like sacramentals. Although they are not themselves a channel of grace, their value is that they predispose us to grace. As you learn to paint icons, you will grow artistically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Thomas More College’s artist-in-residence, internationally acclaimed and Oxford educated Professor David Clayton, will carefully guide you through the entire iconographic process, and you will graduate with a certificate of completion—and an icon you produced with your own hands.

Previous training in art is not required for the Iconography course.