Artist Lecture: Practicing a Living Tradition

with Maureen McCormack

Sunday, April 15, 2:00pm
Members $8, Nonmembers $12. To register call 978.598.5000 x121.

Are iconographers mere copyists, endlessly repeating the ancient prototypes line by line? Or are they creative artists? Using recently completed icons inspired by ancient prototypes, Maureen will explore the constraints of tradition, the limits of self-expression, and the role of free will in the creative process of a 21st century iconographer.

Maureen McCormick attended her first iconography workshop with Vladislav Andrejev, founder of the Prosopon School of Iconology, in 1996 at Trinity Church, Princeton, her home parish. Although trained as a secular fine artist, Maureen was immediately drawn to the medium and to the mystical theology that informs this centuries-old sacred art of the Christian East.

Maureen holds an MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University. She moved to the Princeton area in 1986 to join the staff of the Princeton University Art Museum, where she worked for more than twenty-five years. In January 2013, after years of juggling a satisfying but demanding career with her study of the icon, Maureen stepped down from her position as Chief Registrar and Manager of Collections Services to devote herself more fully to iconography. In March 2013 she was consecrated as Trinity Church’s first Iconographer in Residence.

In addition to painting, teaching, and coordinating Prosopon School workshops, Maureen puts her museum experience to use organizing occasional exhibitions of icons, most recently in 2013 at Princeton Theological Seminary’s Erdman Hall Gallery and in 2015 at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.