Maaria Treima

Maaria Treima is an artist living in Saaremaa, Estonia. After graduating from the painting and restoration department of Pallas University of Applied Sciences, she started attending icon painting courses by Nikita Andreyev from the Prosopon School of Iconology.

With a couple of years detour in tailoring studies, she returned to icon painting and met her new teacher Anthony Gunin, whose technique she continues practicing and learning from.

In her own words: “An integral part of iconography is gilding, which is a beautiful and intricate technique to continually practice and study about. Iconography is not a common practice anymore, but for those who continue the tradition nowadays, it is done with great dedication and high quality”. 

Treima has spent time studying it in Greek monasteries, workshops in Poland, Kiev and in the past few years, through online courses. Since her college years she has kept painting portraits and other various commission work.

In her first solo exhibition coming this summer, she will share paintings that are highly influenced by the traditional icon painting and gilding techniques infused with her own visual interpretations and expressions. A few times per year she leaves her country-living on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia to give tempera and icon painting courses in different colleges and universities.