Miller says, “pushing little particles of dirt around in an egg yolk emulsion to create beauty blends everything that I’m about. I love nature, I love life, and I love God. The ancient Orthodox style is one of the highest resonances of beauty for me. I never get tired of this magnificent medium and mysterious content that is expressed. Writing books about icons has been a delight.”

Miller effuses humility, woven with her sharp humor, acknowledging that being an iconographer is both a privilege and a gift. She says, “I feel like I’m chosen,” quickly followed by, “I am the last person God should have picked to do this.” Miller light-heartedly refrains from divulging her thoughts behind that statement; instead, she rests on the sense of dedication that she has toward her work. “My books about icons reflect my commitment to translate what I cannot see or explain.”

There are about 500 classic divine images within the Russian iconic canon, a guidebook of sorts, cobbled together over the past 1,800 years. Those 500 images remain static, changing slowly according to the slow, gradual unfolding of theological concepts emerging. Miller believes that thoughts of God begin without color, form, shape, or line in creation. We begin as God began in a divine void, and from there He, She, or It manifests images as we do.

At times, Miller has wrestled with her choice to paint in an unconventional contemporary style, and her books about icons highlight the journey. However, she never forgets the spiritual root of iconography as the source of relevancy, for a world desperately seeking the answer to why we are here. What is the goal in life? The ancient style demands a certain type of structure, “but the images themselves speak of the divine potential, of mystics, and of people who have prayed their whole lives.”

Bio. Mary Jane Miller is a Byzantine-style iconographer with over three decades of writing books about icons. Her interpretations of sacred art are contemporary, unique, and unorthodox at times. Her collections and lectures are provocative, especially when she offers her 5-day immersion workshops using egg tempera. The work has been exhibited in Museums and churches in the United States and Mexico. As an author, Miller writes luxuriously, blending historical content and personal insights to arrive at contemporary conclusions about faith. Over the past decade, she has devoted her work to the voices of women and care for the Earth.

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