The story about Mary Magdalene is totally different in the books one from another. I don’t know, because I’ve never met her, for as far as I know.

Who can tell? Who cares? I’m just the painter and that gives me room to focus on colours and give her a lovely face. And the ability to put that lovely face on lovable products. What about to have her on your mug or on your notebook?

Raphael is the healing archangel and so I chose to make an icon of him for my nephew who, I thought, could use some kind of healing.

I was happy to find this one, with a second angel in the shadows. Don’t know exactly who it is, but I loved it. And it is an interesting image all together. And also fit with the kind of protection I wanted to put in this icon.

READ THE STORY OF TOBIAS AND RAPHAEL

I made it on a thick piece of pressed wood. I made 5 of them and I love the size and how they can stand independently. But they are a bit more difficult to paint on.

Anastasi (Ανασταση) means Resurrection. And this is the biggest celebration in the Orthodox church. Bigger than the birth of the Christ (christmas) is the resurrection.

After the BIG WEEK of fasting and praying. After Ash Wednesday, White Thursday and Good Friday there is Big Saturday, celebrating the resurrection of everybody. Including Fireworks exploding from the church.

The light is given from the centre of a totally dark church to everyone holding a candle, in and outside. And people wish eachother: “Καλη ανασταση” meaning: a “Good Resurrection”.

So I found an example from Mexico, with a lot of angels many colors. I removed the angels and made Christ in white, like jumping out of the darkness. And I removed the skulls and bones you often see in this icon.

For the cherubims I used only white on dark blue and was surprising myself with all different expressions I got on the little faces. It was a joyful ride to make this icon.

Saint Anna (also Ann or Anne, from Hebrew Hannahחַנָּה, meaning “favor” or “grace”) of David‘s house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ according to Christian Tradition. St Anna is the Greek rendering of her Hebrew name Hannah. Mary’s mother is not named in the canonical gospels.

Christian view: According to the Gospel of James, a document of the New Testament apocrypha, St Anna and her husband St Joachim, after years of childlessness, were visited by an angel who told them that they would conceive a child. St Anna promised to dedicate the child to God’s service. St Joachim and St Anna are believed to have given Mary to the service of the Second Temple when the girl was three years old.

The story bears a superficial similarity to that of the birth of Samuel, whose mother Hannah had also been childless. Although St Anna’s cult receives little attention in the Western church prior to the late 12th century, dedications to St Anna in the Eastern church occur as early as the 6th century. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, St Anna is ascribed the title Forbear of God, and both the Birth of Mary and the Dedication of Mary to the Temple are celebrated as two of the Twelve Great Feasts.

This Eleousa, the third one, took some years to finish.

I did not make it easy for myself, because I prepared an old bread cutting board, probably used in the kitchen for years, from the recycle shop. Real wood keeps always working, (changing form) so in the end, when I was busy painting it, I got some air under the cloth. And that makes the risk of breaking the painted layer.

But I loved her tender expression and also it had a real old feeling and look.

When I showed it to Marina, who I met in Greece in 2018, on my phone, she fell in love with the piece. It was just half way done, but it gave her a feeling. She’s from a Greek mother and an English father, so she is connected to icons and has her kitchen full of them.

Anyway, finally 4 years later, in a weird way we kept connected, she bought it for her son and I sent it to her in Bath, England.

Below you can see some pictures of the process of painting. I totally once removed her face and started all over. And finally Marina’s son Eugene, happy with his present.

When I started to take lessons in icon painting I was eager to practice, so I bought a second shelf to paint on. I practiced at home at both paintings. Every week I went to my teacher and he tought me the next step. And I finished it fast, so not to be bored I worked on two pieces.

Here you can see how different two of the same icons can be.

To me many of the icons have a kind of sad and serious expression on their face, which can be beautiful, but not always necessary. So I wanted to make them softer and friendlier. And you can see the difference between my first and second Eleousa.

After a while I’ve given this icon to a dear friend.

And he, some years later, gave it to a Catholic priest from Croatia. The man had been working here in The Netherlands for some years and meant a lot to my friend.

So now this icon lives somewhere in Sarajevo.