‘A hymn of triumph’: Tradition of religious iconography continues in Georgia
On an afternoon in late March, the students in Nancy Ewing’s Atlanta home are working on an art form that nearly died out hundreds of years ago.
Icons are ancient works of religious art, often depictions of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints and scenes from the Bible. It’s a tradition that is particularly central to the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic churches, but can be found across several Christian denominations.
Although it has ancient roots, decades of conflict nearly drove iconography into extinction before religious leaders revived it in the 700s. The practice carries on today in churches and makeshift classrooms in Georgia as a way for Christians to connect with their faith and venerate the holy figures central to their religion.
As Ewing’s students start working on their icons, they might pick up a prayer book from the long, white table in her studio, step over one of the hulking great Pyrenees guardians who slumber on the floor, and walk through a short hallway to Ewing’s sunlit prayer room.
Where they choose to pray is up to them, but the smooth wooden pew against the back wall is really the best spot, Ewing said. It faces the eastern wall of the room, a wall that catches the sunlight at certain hours of the day, causing the hanging icons to glow, and dozens of eyes to look down on the supplicant.
The impressive sight is amplified by the 23-karat-gold leaf halos surrounding the heads of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints and archangels, so that the room takes on an ethereal quality.
“There’s nothing like (gold),” Ewing said. “It’s so transformative, but symbolically it represents the uncreated light of God.”
Ewing’s students read their prayers, beginning with the St. Michael the Archangel prayer, and ending with a prayer specific for icon painting.
It reads, in part, “Enlighten and direct my soul, my heart and my spirit. Guide the hands of thy unworthy servant, so that I may worthily and perfectly portray thine icon, that of thy Mother and all the saints.”
Then, the students are ready to start working on their own icons in the other room. For several hours, they bend their heads over wooden boards covered with gesso. Their brushes steadily paint on careful lines and the folds of robes. All the while, Ewing’s dogs, named Michael and Gabriel, snore softly across the floor.
Teaching the next generation of iconographers
The study of iconography can feel like a distant and obscure artistic endeavor. For such a niche style, where master teachers live far away and workshops require a flight and a weeklong stay, studying iconography can feel inaccessible.
But several teachers and communities in Georgia are trying to change that.
Ewing has been painting icons for 19 years. Her family is from Romania, and she comes from a long line of Eastern Catholic priests. A woman in her Bible study suggested that with her heritage and love of art, she ought to paint icons.
Ewing finally started teaching nine years ago. It was something several people suggested she do, but she left the how and when it would happen up to God. It started with just one student — a friend who had been sick for some time. Working through that first icon took them almost three years, she said, but the process helped Ewing get a better grasp on how to teach iconography to others.
Her group started out small— just eight ladies from nearby churches. But over the years, word spread. Now, she teaches multiple classes a week, both during the day and in the evenings. Students must cover the cost of their supplies, and Ewing asks that they donate to a Catholic charity, but otherwise her instruction is free.
There are plenty of moments when she has doubts as a teacher, considering she’s still taking classes herself, but Ewing realized that teaching others, especially younger people, would allow the icons to have more impact on people.
Indraneel and Mariana Kuppili have been learning from Ewing since 2024, after Mariana Kuppili attended a bridal shower at Ewing’s house. She had done a little bit of art in high school, but her husband was a novice, and iconography felt intimidating for them.
It can be a jarring medium for those unfamiliar with it, though that is entirely intentional, Ewing said. Of course, the Byzantine artists knew how to paint realistic images, but too much realism “distracts you from getting to the essence of the thing.”
“What it does is it kind of shakes up your brain,” she said. “Sometimes your left brain just quits, and that lets you then experience it with the creative and the right brain, and the part that’s going to get deeper into the spiritual.”
After one year of classes, Indraneel Kuppili finished his first icon. And now the Kuppilis are teaching through a summer camp they assist with. Last year, they led a group of teenagers in completing their first icon, the Sacred Heart.
“What I really wanted was something that they could take away, that was actually beautiful, and that they could hang up and, you know, feel proud of and use it to connect with their faith in a more real way,” Mariana Kuppili said.
In the hills of North Georgia, Teresa Satola leads an icon painting class of her own. Her former student, Karen Webster, began her iconography journey when Satola started teaching classes in North Georgia almost a decade ago. Now, Webster and Satola both create icons for their church, Our Lady of the Mountains, as well as for others in metro Atlanta.
“My thing is to get everybody who’s ever wanted to do one to come and do it,” Satola said of her class.
That means letting her students work with more modern materials, and her teachings deviate slightly from the Eastern traditions because she encourages students to develop original paintings after the first few sessions.
Connecting to the holy art
Father Charles Byrd of Mary Our Queen Catholic Church in Peachtree Corners likened the veneration of icons to hanging family portraits on the wall. The saints are meant to encourage Christians by example, he said. Christians venerate, or honor, the saints and the icons, but they do not worship them. It’s similar to how a person may honor and speak to a photograph of a loved one who has died.
There are plenty of debates and schools of thought surrounding the practice of iconography.
Some adhere dogmatically to the idea that one is “writing an icon,” instead of painting it, since an icon is a physical manifestation of a prayer. Others debate whether an icon must be perfectly derivative of the works that came before it, or if there is room for creating something new.
Regardless of the differences, creating an icon is deeply spiritual to many who practice it.
“A lot of people will say that icons are windows into heaven,” Ewing said. “I know that the (teacher) that I’m studying with now, he talks about it as being more that they’re doorways through which heaven comes to us.”
Hortencia Castillo has been taking iconography classes for about three years. While Castillo was raised Catholic, she left the church for a while until she got married. Her husband‘s love of icons, inspired her interest in them.
“He can just look at the icon and just get lost,” she said.
She decided that she wanted to learn the art herself, and fell in love with it.
“It’s a connection that you have, that you know you are making something out of prayer for prayer, and it brings you closer to the saint that you painted. If you painted the saint, you get to learn her story, her struggles, her life. And sometimes you don’t know how much you identify with the saint until you actually paint it,” she explained during a recent class. “Every icon that I paint, I find something that I struggle with, that they have also struggled with.”
The latest icon she’s working on, St. Mary of Egypt, is a gift for her husband in honor of his mother, who died 10 years ago.
St. Mary of Egypt tells a story of transformation. Mary turned from her old life to become a hermit in the desert, dedicating her life to God. Castillo’s husband often speaks to St. Mary because she reminds him of his mother and her faith journey.
“It makes me feel like I’m bringing somebody into prayer,” she said.
Telling the story of the Christian faith
The icons lining the church at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church are so striking that they drew Sonny Vargas to convert to Orthodox Christianity. They certainly inspired him to visit the church for the first time after he watched a movie featuring an iconostasis, an ornate wall covered in icons often found inside Orthodox churches.
The Georgia State senior walked into St. Elias one day five years ago, and he just kept returning. Now, he’s studying fine arts and iconography as he prepares to go to seminary after graduation.
The iconostasis at the front of St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church is ornamented in glowing gold, deep blues and rich reds. At the pinnacle of the icon screen is an arched mural of the Last Supper, under which other images including the saints, archangels, the Virgin Mary and Christ reside. Behind the iconostasis is the sanctuary and altar, which only clergy may enter.
While this iconostasis was finished in the 1970s by a master iconographer from New York, the two sides of the church are currently undergoing a transformation that will be finished next year, Father Gabriel Tannous said.
On a recent weekday, Chicago-based iconographers Odisea and Marianna Bifsha installed dozens of icons they had first painted on canvases in their studio on the church’s walls. As Odisea worked on one side, his wife papered the rest of the wall with gold leaf.
With the rising cost of gold, it’s been more expensive than Tannous anticipated.
The number of icons in St. Elias is normal for most Orthodox churches, he said. This latest project took about a year of fundraising, but iconography is vital to the church’s liturgy.
“It helps us kind of focus our attention and tell stories about (the saints’) lives,” he said. “This kind of points you toward worship.”
Tannous said he thinks the beauty and the classical art in the Orthodox religion is a part of what has drawn new parishioners like Vargas into the church in recent years.
Tannous pointed to a painting on the iconostasis. He explained that it shows St. George, who stood up to Emperor Diocletian and was martyred for doing so.
“Sacred art is part of our long tradition,” Byrd said. “They draw us into the mystery of the Lord, His incarnation, and they come out of our sense that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
A stained-glass window inside St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church shows St. John of Damascus, a defender of iconography. In the window, he holds a scroll that says: “The icon is a hymn of triumph, a manifestation, a memorial inscribed for those who have fought and conquered.”
About the Author
Olivia Wakim is a digital content producer on the food and dining team. She joined the AJC as an intern in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia with a journalism degree. While in school, she reported for The Red & Black, Grady Newsource and the Marietta Daily Journal.
