My subject eluded me until Easter 1980 when I went to the Russian Orthodox cathedral in San Francisco with my friend, the iconographer Dmitri Shkolnik and discovered that I’d been waiting my entire life to paint icons. 

 

So I began to study icon painting: first with Dmitri and then with the late Byzantine Catholic Jesuit, Fr. Egon Sendler in Paris.   

 

Over time, my work improved enough to begin to accept commissions and I began my studio, The New Jerusalem Workshop.  Somewhere in the past four decades I also managed to marry my wife, Paula, have a daughter, Phoebe and a son, Miguel, and become a Catholic deacon.  

 

In addition to painting icons for churches and individual patrons, over the years I’ve also designed stained glass windows, illustrated books (three for the Liturgical Press and one for Oregon Catholic Press)and  have made any number of woodcuts and  relief prints.    

 

The best part of being called to this work is knowing that through God’s grace, the completed icon will be a presence of beauty, devotion and prayer in a home or in a church.