Irene Pérez-Omer
Irene Pérez-Omer was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She moved to the United States with her parents at age 16. She received a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Pérez-Omer has studied drawing and sculpture in Florence, Italy, and has traveled extensively to art centers in Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Germany and the United Kingdom.
She has exhibited in Texas, New Mexico, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., the United Kingdom and Mexico. Her works are included in private collections in the United States, England, Spain, Finland, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela.
She has worked in a variety of media, including drawing, oil painting, stone and glass sculpture, mixed-media pieces, installations, print making, and since 1997, the ancient method of egg tempera. She currently teaches iconography workshops, holds regular weekly classes in her studio in Austin, and organizes a yearly workshop for the Prosopon School of Iconology in Austin.
Pérez-Omer has studied both icon writing and icon theory under master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev since 1997. Currently, she dedicates herself solely to the study and practice of iconography, writing icons for private and church commissions, and teaching iconography workshops in the United States and Mexico.
The focus of Pérez-Omer's artwork prior to her study of iconography encompassed the use of both Christian and Eastern symbols to express the stages and different aspects of her spiritual journey, her search for spiritual knowledge, truth and God. This interest guided her to the study of iconography, which uses a system of symbolic language to reveal the Truth expressed in the Gospels. This was a natural evolution from her earlier work. Instead of continuing to develop a personal symbolic language, she found in iconography a perfectly developed and universal symbolic language that revealed the truth about God and was more accessible than any system of personal symbolic language one single artist could devise. The practice of icon-writing is a form of contemplation, meditation and prayer which extends beyond the studio to every aspect of the iconographer's life. It is a complete or holistic art form in this respect. The whole of the iconographer's life becomes icon writing.
For additional information about Irene Pérez-Omer and Icon Arts, please visit her web site, www.iconarts.com, or find her on Facebook under Icon Arts.
