Our Teachers

Xenia Pokrovskaya gave up her career as a biophysicist in the late 1960s to dedicate herself to the ancient art of icon painting. These were not welcoming times for such a decision. Stalin had realized, two decades earlier, the political advantage of halting the destruction of Russia's religious art treasures produced by a 1000 years of Orthodox Christianity. But the official ban on "making new icons" remained aggressively in force. Icon painting workshops in monasteries and artisan centers were shut down. The practical knowledge and skill of icon painters, transferred orally from one generation to next, had all but disappeared. more >>

Marek Czarnecki is a long-time student of Pokrovsky and a major component of our teaching team. As an iconographer, artist and community scholar, he owns and operates a liturgical arts studio, Seraphic Restorations, in Meriden, CT. Gifted writer and teacher of icon-painting, Czarnecki authored the instruction manual for the Six Days of Creation courses, Technique and Teaching of Ksenia Pokrovskaya. more >>

Anna Pokrovskaya Gouriev is a consummate iconographer who has had the rare advantage of growing up in the household of one of the world's most prominent icon painters, Xenia Pokrovsky, her mother. Exposed to icon painting from earliest child-hood 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. more >>