Sasha Chaitow
Sasha Chaitow is a British-Greek artist, writer, lecturer, and scholar of cultural history.
Sasha has been painting since her early teens and studied art and iconography in Corfu, Greece, in the workshops of Corfiot artists Spyros Alamanos, Aggelos Gerakaris, and Nerina Lymperopoulou. She attended Vakalo School of Fine Art in Athens, Greece, has exhibited in Greece, Spain, Sweden and the UK, and her artwork has been published in international cultural journals.
Sasha holds a PhD in cultural history, specializing in the relationship between Symbolist art and esoteric philosophy. She is the author of a book on French Symbolist author and philosopher Joséphin Péladan, and has published numerous articles on topics related to art and culture in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain and the USA. She has taught History and Philosophy at the University of Indianapolis, and has lectured extensively in Europe and the USA on related subjects.
She is currently (2016) developing a symbolist collection of paintings "Saving the Lives of Angels", a narrative exploring human creativity and ancient creation myths, which is accompanied by artist talks and live retelling of the myths inspiring the images.
Sasha also owns and curates ICON gallery (www.iconcraft.gr) - home to an arts collective in Corfu, Greece. Currently representing 35 local artists, it is dedicated to the support and promotion of traditional Greek art and specialises in symbolic, spiritual and mythical themes.
For more information, including Sasha’s academic CV and list of publications, visit: http://sashachaitow.co.uk/about/
Gallery
Videos
Saving the Lives of Angels (preview)
A visual narration of the legend of the Fall as told by Josephin Peladan.
- Artwork by Sasha Chaitow
London talk on Peladan
Immensely prolific, yet discredited during his lifetime, the symbolist author and visionary occultist Joséphin Péladan (Sâr Merodack, 1858-1918) constructed a vast yet coherent body of teachings in response to the social decadence he perceived in late 19th century French society. In his cycle of novels, La Décadence Latine, his characters represented archetypal ideals facing existential and metaphysical dilemmas against a background of a dying, corrupt, Western culture. Each of these symbolic stories had the purpose of inspiring his readers to seek a more ideal existence through a form of self-initiation that Peladan dubbed kaloprosopia: an art of transformation of personality through a life lived as a work of art. His theoretical esoteric works, Comment on Devient Mage and Comment on Devient Fée, respectively written for men and women, were handbooks for self-initiation that laid out the theory underpinning his novels. A formalised version of the same process formed the basis for his Rosicrucian order. By presenting the same idea in different forms; through art, literature, and more intellectually demanding writings, Péladan's intent was to bring this call for regeneration to as wide an audience as possible, and in so doing, to spark a social renaissance.After a brief introduction to Peladan's life, times, and writings, this talk will focus on his method for self initiation, the idea of kaloprosopia, and question its possible relevance to our time.
* This talk is based on an article published in The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies, 2013.
A series of progress shots and info on how I create icons and other miniature artwork for my new collections of miniature oil paintings, "Elysia" and "Aevum".
