Icon writer's designs on secular art

BY BESS TWISTON-DAVIES
A BULGARIAN icon painter resident at a leading Catholic school had her first major art exhibition in London last week.
Silvia Potter (née Dimitrova), whose husband Simon is a teacher at Downside School in Somerset, produces traditional icons as well as striking, boldly-coloured paintings on wood.
Her work was last week the inaugural exhibition at the new art gallery in the crypt of St Mary Church, Islington.
Mrs Potter arrived in England for three months in 1999 to paint an icon of St Benedict for the monks of Downside Abbey in Somerset. She fell in love with Simon Potter, a computer teacher at Downside School and stayed in England to many him.
In 2000, she painted the Stations of the Cross for Wells Cathedral, using traditional icon-painting methods, painting images on egg tempera. Now encouraged by her husband, she has developed secular paintings, depicting on wood colourful images of dancing maidens, wedding parties, horses and pipers, with strong iconic overtones "My husband saw me drawing a doodle one day and said 'Why don't you do a doodle on wood like an icon?' So did. I find it wonderful. With irons you paint according to rules, but these paintings gave me space to experiment with colour and subjects. But painting icons feels like being at home to me. I am now trying to find a balance between icon and other painting," said Mrs Potter, who was invited to display her work at St Mary's by the Revd Graham Kings, the vicar.
She said: "Icons are probably the oldest form of art dating back to the sixth century. The technique has been kept through centuries untouched and unchanged. Icon means image in Greek, a sacred image of veneration."
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