site.btaFrom Wood and Paint to Spirit and Light: The Craft of Icon Painter Borislava Katsarova

Icon painter Borislava Katsarova believes that there are different paths to reach God. “I wish more people would find their way to him through beautiful and gentle paths, just as the icon brought me to faith, and the beautiful church singing brought me into the church,” she said in a BTA interview.

Katsarova began painting icons over 27 years ago, while working as a biology teacher. She recalls that the first icon she painted was of Saint George. Over time, she mastered the craft, learning technique and how to be faster. She does not describe herself as an artist, even though she works with paint and brushes - nor does she see herself purely as a craftsman, since that alone does not bring her the fullness and satisfaction she needs.

“Icon painters are a special kind of people, different from both artists and craftsmen. For us, a fundamental requirement to paint an icon is faith - that is primary. Without genuine, sincere faith, without deeply believing, we cannot claim to be painting icons,” she emphasized.

“I depict the holy faces and our Lord Jesus Christ - that is, the Creator, not the creation. Everything He created - sun, earth, plants, and animals - is very beautiful, and artists inspired by that beauty reproduce it on canvas. But we iconographers are obliged to portray as best we can the Creator himself - who made all that beauty. Then the feeling and fullness as an experience are irreplaceable,” Katsarova said.

“It is hard for me to say whether the modern person understands the icon as people once did, but the meaning of the icon is singular - to be an image that carries our prayer,” she said. “We do not pray to the panel, we do not pray to the paints, but to the saint who carries our prayer and presents it to God so we receive the answers we seek,” she emphasized.

According to Katsarova, only a few iconographers have reached the concept of holiness in art, such as Andrei Rublev, who painted the “Old Testament Trinity.” “These are holy things, truly ‘God-written,’ as if painted not by a human hand,” she said.

Today, although she is highly in demand as an iconographer, Katsarova still finds it a challenge to paint the images so well that people are satisfied and happy when they receive their icon. She hopes her icons will affect people so that they become more humble, more devoted in faith, and that their prayers become more effective.

Her greatest satisfaction comes from work on churches and monasteries, where she creates both new icons and copies of old, valuable ones.

Her style is simple and recognizable, evolving over time into increasingly masterful and detailed compositions.

Borislava Katsarova opened her studio and home to BTA and shared details about the traditional process of creating an icon. This method follows principles and rules preserved in the old icon-painting manuals, known as Hermeneia.

A very important element is the wooden base of the icon, which must be high-quality and well-dried. The next step is a process called "tutkalosvane" in Bulgarian (glue sizing), in which a mixture of water and gelatin is applied to the board to form a strong bond between the wood and the next layers. The first of these layers is a piece of canvas that is glued onto the board. After it dries, the surface is primed by applying and smoothing out at least 10–15 coats of primer. The surface is then sanded by hand using different grains of sandpaper until it becomes perfectly smooth for painting. Using graphite, the iconographer transfers the contours of the original image onto the primed board. Then, water-based paints are applied.

Many of the required tools and materials are still made from natural elements, such as deer hide, horsehair cloth, sable fur brushes, and egg whites - which must be from free-range chicken - used to attach the gold leaf during the gilding process of the icon.

"In our region, when iconographers apply the goldleaf this way, they use Troyan plum rakia, because it has a certain sugar content that increases the stickiness," the painter explains.

Once the gold has dried, it is polished to a mirror shine using an agate burnisher.

When applying colors to the icon, the painter start from dark to light, gradually adding what is called "highlighting", by mixing lighter tones into the paint. It can be white or it can be yellow. "It is a great pleasure to experiment," Katsarova says.

"You do this in increasingly smaller areas, smaller and smaller, until finally, the so-called highlights are applied. These highlights in the icon’s figures represent holiness - they are essential in iconography. I've noticed that one must be a very calm, with truly pure and peaceful thoughts, to approach the faces. That is an absolute requirement. Otherwise, the hand may act on its own, creating things that you can’t even fix later. That’s why I wait for the right moment to do the faces and hands, for example. What I do the rest of the time, I call craftsmanship," she says.

The back of the icon is treated with a special varnish to protect the wood from harmful external influences.

On July 25, Borislava Katsarova will open an exhibition of icons, paintings, and panels in the courtyard of the Church of St. Archangel Michael in the village of Vrabevo.