Through painstaking research, historically accurate technical detail and participation in the Society for Creative Anachronism, Vancouver artist Sharow Burrows seeks the visionary feminine side of the Middle Ages.
In a cheerfully cluttered home studio on Vancouver's East Side, artist Sharon Burrows is busy re-creating the arts and crafts of the Middle Ages. Burrows, a retired Jungian-oriented therapist, creates authentic hand-bound parchment books, illuminated scrolls, Byzantine-style icon paintings and delicate embroidery.
The dazzling art works reflect Burrows' enchantment with the past and what its arts and crafts have to tell us about past eras and the human condition.
Reflecting a lifelong interest in feminism, women's history and spirituality, Burrows has focused much of her art work on the figure of Saint Mary Magdalene.
The first illuminated manuscript book she hand-crafted, in 1997, was about the life of the saint. The leather bound text is graced by a loving copy of an icon-style portrait Burrows first saw years ago in Florence. The original is by the 13th-century Italian artist known as the Master of the Magdalene. The book features other illustrations done in a similar visual style and a text, the Legend of Mary, done in classic medieval calligraphy.
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