The Society has replaced its usual sequence of evening Spring Lectures with a programme of Afternoon Lectures at The Trinity Centre, where our successful series of Artist Demos organised by our Treasurer, Rob Leckey, continue to run.
The afternoon of Wednesday 30th March saw nearly 50 members and friends gathering for the first of these new style lectures, on this occasion to be given by Sister Petra Clare, a well established local iconographer, based in her studio at the English Bridge Workshop in Shrewsbury.
A member of the Greek Orthodox Church and a native of Cardington, in her early years she was a student at Shrewsbury School of Art. She told of her development as an artist and how she came to be working in this specialist area of the Art world. She explained the nature of the icon, its history and the religious ideas it embodies, demonstrating with many examples, some of the traditional techniques involved in its creation. We were particularly impressed with the great energy and liveliness created in the full sized figures in her drawings, in spite of the constraints of the icon format. The lecture concluded with examples of various bespoke icons designed and created in a very site-specific way by our speaker, as commissions for many churches across the UK. There were opportunities for questions and, during the break for refreshments, a chance to examine close up a number of examples on display.
Sister Petra Clare was warmly thanked for an interesting and informative afternoon.