Painting Hidden Worlds

Her dark brown eyes glancing about her room, Maria Kachanova pauses for a moment before she speaks. “An icon is a window to a mountain world. That is the spiritual world.”

She is sitting in her flat in Sokol, a northern district in Moscow.

“As an intermediary between this world and the afterworld, icons have always had great importance, especially in Russia,” Kachanova continues.

She explains that icons in medieval Russia were far more important than in the ancient Greek world. “Every Orthodox Christian had his icons arranged in a corner of a room. Man was born in front of the icon, he lived next to the icon and he died in front of it.”

She then describes the nature of her art. “We are entering into a dialogue with the spiritual world, because each icon is drawn in an inverted perspective… Icon painting deliberately disregards the principle of natural perspective. Praying in front of an icon, in fact, you have the feeling as if you were standing behind it.”

Working mainly for private customers, Kachanova also takes commissions from churches and monasteries.

“It is an Christian Orthodox tradition,” she explains, “that parents order an icon for their newborn child. The icon should be exactly the same size as the child when it was born.”

Orthodox believers feel that icons have the power to protect and to give consolation.

“When I am painting, I build up a special relation with the Saint. He speaks to me and he helps me,” Kachanova says. But, she continues, “I deliberate for too long. That’s something I don’t like about myself.”

Maria Kachanova grew up in Moscow, in a family of architects. In fact, her mother still builds churches in Moscow region.

After graduating from Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry in 2004, Maria jobbed around as an interior designer. “But I wanted to become an iconographer,” she says “so in 2008 I entered the Iconography Studio named for St. Alipy Pechersky.”

“I aim to perfect the traditional, plain and intense painting style of the eleventh century,” Kachanova declares. “Unfortunately, the Euro­pean Baroque spoiled the style of icon painting completely. They became much too sensual.”

“Do you believe in life after death?” the reporter asks.

Maria just smiles.