Elena Adamova is an artist from Saint Petersburg who has made icon painting her life’s work. She came to Bulgaria out of love, and has been married to her Bulgarian husband for 41 years. She started painting icons in the early 1980s, first for friends, but ten years later made it her profession. What is closest to her heart are frescoes and restoring churches and chapels. Since 2000 she has painted icons in more than 20 churches. “It may be a mission or destiny – to be doing something for the people, for the heavens, and also for the soul.” In her spare time, she paints icons on pieces of wood left over from the old altars in the restored churches.

Destiny itself seems to have taken her to the village of Balsha near Sofia, at the foot of the Balkan mountain, at the time when she was choosing a place to live. The people from the village hired her to paint the icons in their church – St. Paraskeva – which was built in 1920 next to an older church which is thought to date back to the Middle Ages. As the plaster is literally peeling off its walls, she painted and spackled the walls herself before starting to paint saints and gospel scenes:

“There isn’t enough money for the whole church to be finished so it needs more sponsors,” Elena Adamova says.

“Here in the yard there is another church, it too is dedicated to St. Petka. Archaeologists came and they said that the church’s foundations are even older. The floor is mosaic and there are just two churches like that in Bulgaria. To be preserved as a monument of culture an awning was put up over it many, many years ago. The place really is very special, with a unique atmosphere.”

Elena lives in a small building next to the new church, which was probably once a parsonage. When she is not busy with restoration work, she works in the church garden. She has a dog and two cats who live in the church yard.

“The anchor has been cast, it is decided,” the artist says. “I hope to be able to finish the restoration, as long as St. Petka is with me. I really do want to help! The locals also try to do what they can to help but they are poor and there isn’t much they can do. They raised a small sum but it is not enough for the floor and the dome. This year is difficult but we are hoping next year to be better.”

Today, though it is unfinished, the St. Paraskeva church still welcomes people from the environs on its patron saint’s day. “Hopefully, it will open doors so that we can finish off the work,” Elena Adamova says.

Photos: Darina Grigorova