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NEW HAVEN (nhregister.com) — For 28 years, off and on, the Rev. Theodore Jurewicz has been filling Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church with God’s beauty.

For the past 1½ weeks, he’s been hard at work, 16 or more hours a day, painting icons on the walls that he has now turned into windows into the Kingdom of God.

“We’re going to keep having him back until he gets it right,” kids the Rev. Michael Westerberg, rector of the Russian Orthodox church on Alden Avenue in Westville. The back-and-forth needling between the two priests reveals the affection the friends have for each other.

Jurewicz has painted — a term he prefers to the traditional “written” — all of the icons that cover the walls, archways and screens in Holy Transfiguration Church. According to Westerberg (his friend is too modest to say so himself), Jurewicz is among the finest of iconographers.

“I think he’s the best we’ve got available in America and maybe far beyond America,” Westerberg says, adding with a twinkle, “But you tell him that and his prices go up.”

Icons, depicting scenes from the Bible, the life of Jesus or saints of the church, are a vital part of Orthodox tradition, their symbolism and beauty helping the believer draw closer to God.

“Icons always, when they’re at their best, they point beyond themselves,” says Westerberg. “They point to the Kingdom of God. They allow us to have a vista ... into the kingdom. They invite us in.”

Ultimately, each icon, no matter what the subject, reveals an aspect of Jesus Christ, according to Orthodox belief, whether it depicts Elijah ascending to heaven on a chariot of fire or a martyr whose faith reflected Jesus’ divinity.

“The work of the icon is to convey the truth of the Scripture,” Westerberg says. “It’s not to express the iconographer, his personality, his slant on some religious theme or idea.

“Each iconographer’s work, if he’s a competent iconographer, is unique, but faithful to what has come before, to the Scriptures, to the church, and so if you opened a book of icons from the 12th century or 15th century or eighth century ... you will find the influence of different iconographers, but you’ll find the same truth.”

Jurewicz, 61, who lives in Erie, Pa., and serves at the Church of the Nativity, learned how to convey that truth in seminary, working with two masters of iconography in the 1970s. He was invited by one, the late Archimandrite Cyprian, to paint a cathedral in San Francisco, his first commission.

“He never gave compliments but usually harsh criticisms, and from that you learned,” says Jurewicz. He learned well and established his own reputation, painting Serbian Orthodox churches in Hamilton, Ontario, and a monastery in Third Lake, Ill., that is a replica of the Gracanica monastery in Kosovo.

“For 36 years now, I’ve been raising a family and supporting it with iconography.” That family includes his wife, 10 children and eight grandchildren.

Despite his renown, Jurewicz remains humble and self-deprecating.

“I feel like I’m still learning, and sometimes I feel like an absolute amateur,” he says. “Then you get to a point where you’ve got control over it and that’s when I feel really good, when everything is ready to go.”

Everything about an icon is heavy with meaning, including the use of gold leaf, meant to reflect “the radiance of the Kingdom of God,” says Westerberg, and the artistic style.

“In icons, figures and things don’t cast shadows,” Westerberg says. “Properly done, an icon uses what’s called reverse perspective, which some people who understand iconography very poorly understand as some primitive technique or something like that.”

While in normal perspective there is a vanishing point in the distance, with objects growing smaller and receding to the horizon, in an icon the reverse is true. “Because it opens up … the vanishing point starts from the viewer and it opens ever wider. … What it is is actually a very deep understanding of perspective.”

The icons at Holy Transfiguration Church include Jesus, Mary and the saints, scenes from both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and gatherings of modern saints from America and Russia, tortured and murdered by the Bolsheviks.

While Jurewicz earns a living from iconography, there’s really no separation between his work, his faith and his life, he says.

“I think it’s a connection that everyone has to make with their life. To be a good Christian, you have to be living one life, not a worldly life and a Christian life. It has to be one.”

During this visit, Jurewicz is painting six biblical scenes across the front of a loft over the entryway, including Abraham about to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden. He starts at 4 a.m. and sometimes takes a nap on his scaffold.

While icons are traditionally painted with egg tempura, Jurewicz uses acrylics, because they’re “very convenient,” although he does use egg cartons to hold the paints.

His work at Holy Transfiguration is paid for through donations from the 150 adult members of the parish. “We’ve worked in stages, both because Father Theodore is in great demand, and travels around a lot, and as we’ve had funding sponsors, donors for it,” says Westerberg. “Sometimes it’s been a couple of years between things we’re able to do and sometimes things have come closer together than that.”

The church, which seats only a few dozen, seems to explode with color on first entering, but there are actually a number of cream-colored spaces where icons can be added. Jurewicz says of the empty space: “It’s my enemy.”

“I told Father Theodore I hope to live to see it to be finished,” says Westerberg. “The icons are all there; we just have to get this white off of it.

“It’s not a matter of putting something new on; it’s a matter of uncovering it; because I can see it in my eye. It’s all there, and it’s his work.”