The Apprenticeship Project

I am currently developing a traditional arts curriculum for Catholic schools and parishes.

This curriculum is designed to simulate the experience of apprenticing with a master artist — the way all great artists learned their craft until the birth of academic art schools in the 19th century.

Students will experience life in a Byzantine iconographer’s workshop; in the scriptorium of a medieval monastery; and finally life as an apprentice for the great Italian Renaissance egg tempera painters from Fra Angelico to Botticelli.

They will gain a hands on understanding of how Byzantine iconographers preserved classical egg tempera painting through the Middle Ages. They will see how the monastic scribes of Western Europe created new fonts and new iconography — as well as the very concept of a book as we now know it. And they will see how these two strands came together to create the great Catholic masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.

Students will will create their own original icons, manuscripts, and paintings using non-toxic versions of authentic historical materials. The focus will be on mastering traditional working methods, instead of merely approximating the appearance of traditional art while using modern acrylic paints.

Thus students can expect to finish the curriculum with a solid foundation in the following traditional techniques still used by today’s professional liturgical artists:

  • Egg Tempera Painting

  • Classical Drawing and Composition Principles

  • Manuscript illumination

  • Broad Pen Calligraphy

  • Silverpoint Drawing

  • Mixed Media Silverpoint/Tempera Techniques

  • Gesso panel making

  • Gilding techniques for icons

  • Gilding techniques for manuscripts

This is a “heart project” for me. My goal is to help train the next generation of Catholic artists so that they can add to our great tradition of Catholic liturgical and devotional art. As part of that mission, I am actively looking for opportunities to work with Catholic schools and parishes — even those who do not have large art program budgets and need to find creative ways to make things happen. So if you are interested, or if you know another school or parish that might be interested, please don’t hesitate to contact me.