We are so used to seeing the features of Christ in icons that we no longer pay attention to them, thinking they have always been there, as we see them, taking them for granted. We have perhaps forgotten that behind each feature there is a history and a theological meaning to discover and rediscover. So […]
This spring, I received an email from an American client which left me both intrigued and slightly anxious. Would I like to paint a new icon depicting Christ’s interaction with the Rich Young Ruler described in each of the Synoptic Gospels? Yes, of course! Most icons are commissioned, discussed and then go onto my waiting […]
Editor’s note: This article continues Aidan Hart’s recent article about a reliquary for Saint Vincent of Zaragoza and details Christabel Anderson’s process for making the cloisonnée icon. This article contains a background to the history and technique of cloisonné enamel and a description of the processes used in making the cloisonné enamel icon plaque of Saint Vincent […]
Having studied mosaics all over the world for many years I was delighted to receive a commission last year to create a mosaic for a church in Wales. I completed the illustrated mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in March this year. It is sited on the exterior wall of St Martin’s Church of Wales in Roath, […]
Sometime ago, a friend sent me an image of the Ancient of Days that is being painted in a Greek Orthodox parish in Montréal, Québec, Canada. He wanted to know what I thought of it. The first image was not yet finished and the seond one is finished. I wrote him back the following comments. […]
You enter a silent museum. Standing at an appropriate distance, you gaze at a piece of art set against a clinically white wall. The art is lit as to leave no glare or shine and you as the viewer leave no shadow on it. Enough space is allotted all around the art so to be admired without […]
There is no ass or ox in the Biblical narratives of the birth of Christ. Yet, besides the Christ Child himself, the ass and the ox are the most ancient and stable elements in the iconography of the nativity. In fact the earliest example of a nativity known to us contains only the swaddled Christ in the manger flanked by the ox […]
I was recently asked by a young student of St-Vladimir’s Seminary to make a Panagia which he wanted to give to his bishop. This student is of Indian background and a Syrian Orthodox. I have always been fascinated by Orthodoxy in India, the stories of St-Thomas, the link with Nestorian Christianity and also their long […]
As a liturgical artist, as someone who makes expensive objects to furnish the Church or to be worn by its clergy, there is a homily of St-John Chrysostom I like to keep in the back of my mind. It is a homily on the Gospel of St-Mathew in which he warns us: “Do you want […]
In August I completed a wall painting on the east wall of my medieval parish church, The Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Fathers, Shrewsbury, England. On some of the other walls there already exist simple medieval wall paintings, dating from around 1380 A.D., but the east wall was newly plastered during recent restoration work […]