Katherine de Shazer - Artist and Iconographer
The mystery of Mother Nature, the cosmos and human nature have fascinated Katherine since she was a young. Over the years she has explored many mediums to represent these mysteries and the intertwining relationships. One of her favorite mediums to express these relationships is egg tempera. It happened when she walked into a classroom redolent with the smell of incense, spiritual musical chant, and the presence of an elderly, bearded, Russian gentleman who spoke very little English that she felt a medium would do justice to her vision of mystery in the universe. That first class dove her headfirst into the ancient technique of egg tempera and iconography which for centuries has been taught from master to student.
It is the physicalness of the painting processes (grinding ‘soil’, semi-precious stones, plant materials, breathing on clay for gilding, etc.) that connects Katherine to Mother Nature and the earth while the iconic artistic style of opaque, translucent and transparent layers of paint combined with the spiritual contemplation of ‘writing’ icons helps her to reveal the images of the saints, or people deified in God and to translate the language of the mystical cosmos and human nature into the visible world of color, shape and symbols.
Katherine holds iconography classes, workshops and presentations for people from all artistic and faith backgrounds attending. This wonderful community of icon or ‘image’ writers/painters continues to work to understand the mystical in their lives and the universe.
