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The Washing (of the Disciple’s Feet), 2020.

Worshipping with the Saints,
here and now.

The Conestoga Iconographic Studio exists with a mission to root the experience of God in the time and place in which we live. It does this by creating icons with a simple style and in a way that is holy.

Its icons’ style aims to reveal the world as radiant with the light of its Creator within an American context. In the village of Conestoga (like much of the West), such a vision of the world full of glory is undeveloped. This style is simple, grounded in the belief that simplicity is the natural resolution of complexity. Lines are bold and calligraphic. Colour is frank and contrasted like a puzzle, while clothing is abstracted towards the geometric. In such icons, the saints and feasts of the Church are experienceable examples of a transfigured in Christ and present in the new world.

The way each icon is made embodies a revelation received from the land. Everything needed for the work is foraged in a faithful knowing of the local landscape. Trees are harvested with thanksgiving to build wooden panels. Dirt and plants are received as gifts to make pigments for colour. The farming of chickens and bees is done with love and provides paint and varnish.

While Symeon paints each icon himself, the studio is a small community business. Both family and friends support the studio with gifts of money and labour. Together, our work continues in the faith that God provides everything needful.

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Commission an Icon

Icon of St. Andrew with Fr. Colin and Shannon in PEI.

Find out more about commissioning an icon for your church or home. Click here to read more.

Become a Patron

Getting involved and helping in the studio

Consider becoming a patron of the studio so that more saints can become manifest through the studio’s work. Click here to read more.

Testimonial

Symeon’s iconography is a hymn of praise.

When Saint John of Damascus wrote his defence of the icons, On the Divine Images, itself a deep meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation he affirmed the sacrality of all God’s creation from the molecular composition of minerals, the glory of the cedars of Lebanon, celestial bodies, indeed, the whole of the cosmos. The Incarnation calls us to a deep regard for every human being and all creatures, the beauty of flora and fauna, indeed, the earth under our feet. The earth we walk is a reliquary and minerals and metals of each particular place a sacred treasure. Symeon’s iconography, drawing as it does on the local palette of each region of Canada, is a hymn of praise calling each of us to a deeper regard for our fragile world, a deeper attention to the Holy Spirit who “is everywhere present and fillest all things”.
David J. Goa
Founding Director. Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, University of Alberta

Paper Icons

Paper icons are part of a more recent tradition within the church. Found in the private cells of modern saints, they profoundly enter our daily lives in the collections they form in our homes. They offer an iconographic portal to heaven in a way that can be very dear in our prayers. Often given as tokens of generosity and love to friends and children, they are the embodiment of God’s freely given love even in their unassuming simplicity.

Articles & Videos

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Video

Painting an Icon of Saint Nicholas

“Those who set up the most holy icon (of Saint Nicholas) and greet it, who have it as a constant companion in their houses as though it were the beloved man himself, are conspicuously rescued by his meditations with God from the various nooses and traps of a life full of troubles.” —Michael the Archimandrite, … Read more
Symeon
Article

Painting Noah amid the animals

One of the icons painted this summer was Noah the Just. As a saint chosen to be part of the studio’s Icons at Home Project, and as an icon that I was planning to highlight in an article for Mortise & Tenon, it was one that I looked forward to on many different levels. What I … Read more
Article

New Article in Mortise & Tenon Magazine

Without a doubt, my favourite woodworking magazine is Mortise & Tenon. It is a publication that always has exceptional and profound articles, along with photos that are beautiful and inspiring. Last year the editors and I spoke about the possibility of writing for them on the topic of making an icon panel, and I’m delighted … Read more
Symeon
Article

The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet

The belief that icons reveal the eternal truth embodied in Jesus Christ within the place and time is at the centre of the studio’s work here in Conestoga. It was with great joy that the studio accepted a commission to paint an icon of the Washing of the Disciples’ Feet last year.  The Washing of … Read more