Sacred Feminine
“Some of you I will hollow out.
I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you…”
Meeting women practitioner artists
This is a series of occasional opportunities to meet women of different orientations whose artwork is intimately connected to how they live and practice their spiritual/religious tradition.
Meeting Sister Theovouli (Petra Clare)
The Body Divine in Christian Orthodox Iconography
Date: November 2 2024
Time: 10.00-11.30 U.K. time / 11.00-12.30 European time
In Orthodox icon painting there is a whole two thousand year tradition of exploring how to - not so much depict, because this is not possible - but to point, through painting, to the Body Divine: the divinised body. The ultimate icon of the divinised human body is, of course the Transfiguration. I hope to share with you some of the techniques through which the paradox of God and man is portrayed in the technique of the icon. So, I am going to ask you to follow through with me, how an icon painter would do this - both in prayer and technique.
About Sister Theovouli
Sister Theovouli is from a Welsh farming family. Her grandfather migrated to England. She grew up in the ancient Welsh Marches village of Cardington, and was educated in Coalbrookdale,
Shrewsbury and Leeds, specialising in Graphic Design. She entered an Anglican Benedictine monastery and later joined an ecumenical Benedictine Community with a particular ministry in interfaith dialogue. During this period she explored the relationship between religion and vision, producing a number of paintings, and increasingly gravitating towards egg tempera painting on gesso, which enables a quite exceptional strength of light and darkness, with clarity of line and colour.
Following this, and while engaged in retreat work, she encountered Icon painting for the first time, Seeking what for her was then a deeper tradition, she became Roman Catholic in 1975, during which period she developed as an icon painter and teacher, repeating her monastic formation in a Catholic Benedictine community. She later lead a project to renew Skete monasticism in the Highlands of Scotland, and while there completed many public and private icon commissions under her Catholic religious name, Petra Clare.
More recently she realised the inconsistency of teaching the Orthodox tradition while not fully living it, and converted to Orthodoxy in 2015. Almost immediately she entered an Orthodox monastery in Crete, where she worked in the Agia Grapheia (icon workroom). Returning to Shrewsbury in 2021 because of ill health, she has continued to explore the relations between the early manuscript tradition and the Liturgical Icon, while giving tuition via her online Icon course.
Meeting Caroline Mackenzie
Holy Mother Wisdom - an exploration of a female God image in our contemporary context
Date: May 4 2024
Time: 10.00-11.30 U.K. time / 11.00-12.30 European time
Within her medieval Christian context, the visionary, Julian of Norwich experienced God as both male and female. Caroline Mackenzie will show slides and speak about her bronze sculpture, Holy Mother Wisdom. Participants will be invited to share their responses and to explore how a feminine God image might affect their own self-understanding.
About Caroline - www.carolinemackenzie.co.uk
While a student at St Martin’s School of Art, London, I became interested in Hindu sculpture. After graduating, I travelled to India where I lived continuously for twelve years. This was an initiation into a different world view from the secular one I was used to. I found myself participating in a living religious culture. For six years I was near Bengaluru in a Christian Art Ashram. For a further six years I lived in a Hindu temple town near Mysuru. Being separated from the context of my upbringing, enabled me to open myself to thinking in a mythological and symbolic way. Besides developing my own work, I joined with Indian artists who are developing Christian theology and culture from their Indian roots.
In 1988, I returned to the UK. In the psychology of C.G Jung I found a way to reconnect with my origins through his idea of individuation and the importance of myths and symbols in a western context. I built on the Church work I had started in India, and undertook several commissions culminating in the reordering of St Helen’s Catholic Church in Caerphilly, Wales. Then in 2003, I was invited back to India as artist in residence at Fireflies Intercultural Ashram. (near Bengaluru). I was asked to create large granite sculptures with the help of a team of Hindu stone masons. This project brought me into direct contact with people for whom female god images are normative.
My studio is now in Suffolk where I focus on bronze sculpture. My most recent exhibition was in a joint show in Norwich celebrating the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Past Workshops
Waiting in the Womb of Darkness ( Italy, December 2018)
Light from Light; begotten not made; of one Being with the Mother ( Italy, September 2021)
Holy Mother Wisdom (Italy, November 2022)
Eros and Shakti; integrating the potency, wildness and wisdom of the Sacred Feminine in our daily lives ( Italy, May 2023)