Iconography

Icons have been a part of my own prayer life for a long time.  Back in 2017, I had the opportunity to attend a five day course at the Princes School of Traditional Arts - an introduction to painting an icon.  I was captivated by the processes involved as a way of being enabled to portray something of Truth that does not reply on speech and words.

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'Being captivated' has developed into an aspect of my calling and since then I have had the privilege to begin training as an iconographer, initially with Hanna Ward and since 2020, with Ian Knowles as part of the Arbor Vitae Academy.  

 

This has taken me through learning about not only technical aspects of drawing, painting with egg tempera and gilding, but also through learning about the history and context of icons, and the spirituality associated with them.  

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Iconography provides for another prayerful focus of life and work.  The journey continually challenges me to develop not only my iconographic skills but also my understanding of the spiritual life and so it continues to form me as an individual, requiring the same order of dedication and discipline as the living of religious life.

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One of the tasks of the icon is to reveal the hidden; to show something of the transfigured nature of the creation; to draw out the spiritual essence of each person or event or thing depicted.  It is no small task and I hesitate to even think I can begin. The only reason we can begin is because of the incarnation: the reality of God made human, that we can become partakers of the divine nature. 

 

We quite often hear the quotation from Irenaeus  ‘The glory of God is a wo/man fully alive…’. Less often do we hear the second part of that quotation ‘…and the life of wo/man consists in the beholding of God.’  

 

Encouraging others to behold God seems to be what my ministry is about; in prayer, retreat and spiritual direction offering spaces where they can deepen their experience of beholding God. For some, iconography provides another way of beholding and encountering God.

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Below are some examples of my work thus far.