Anna Gouriev is a gifted iconographer who has had the rare advantage of growing up in the household of one of the world’s most prominent icon painters, Ksenia (or Xenia) Pokrovsky, her mother. Exposed to icon painting from earliest childhood days in Moscow, Anna was surrounded by the steady coming and going of artists, theologians and intellectuals. It was this close network of family and friends which was instrumental in recovering the ancient tradition of icon painting during a time when few understood it or dared practice it except in secret.

In this stimulating environment, Anna learned icon painting in the gradual and natural way that daughters learn to cook by watching their mothers. It was also an education by discovery, involving the whole Pokrovsky family working together in various capacities to restore hundreds of icons brought to them from all over Russia. Much sought after as experts in icon restoration, they worked almost as archeologists and chemists to uncover, layer by layer, the lost technique and palette of generations of iconographers gone before.

Read the full article on the Hexaemeron website.

To see how an icon is made watch this video:

Beauty is important. Dostoevsky said that beauty is the invisible world making itself visible. For this reason we strive for beauty inside of our Church.

Our gratitude to the Edna Mitchell family who donated the icons to St. Peter’s.