Delighted yesterday to receive a complimentary copy of a new devotional book from the USA which features my icons! The main author, Dr Carla Sunberg is the president of the Church of the Nazarene's seminary in Kansas, and this little volume has grown out of her PhD researches into the doctrine of theosis, the Cappadocian Mothers, seven extraordinary women from one extraordinary Christian family who lived in Cappadocia (modern Turkey) in the fourth century. The males of the family, who include Basil the Great, are more known these days, so Dr Sunberg is redressing an imbalance in producing this volume of vitae and reflective exercises on these wives, sisters and mothers: all of them saints and spiritual warriors in their own right, some of them powerful land-owning matrons and society ladies, and some who renounced the world for Christ and took up the hermit's life. The author's husband commissioned a whole set of icons honouring the family while the research was in progress, which was a few years ago now. A nice surprise to have them revisited.

Forget the seasonal socks and sweaters, the triennial exhibition of the British Association of Iconographers is taking place in a couple of weeks' time, giving everyone an opportunity to buy a more enduring Christmas gift! Please forward the poster to anyone you think may be interested. St Saviour's church in Lupus Street, a rather fine neo-gothic building,  is also very well placed to combine with a visit to Tate Britain. Both amateur and professional members will be showing and selling work, and there is a programme of lectures by prominent iconographers to accompany the show. Dr Stephane Rene will talk on Coptic iconography in the 21st Century, Aidan Hart will deliver a lecture entitled "The Nature of Divine Beauty: a tough love", and Peter Murphy will  talk about the icons of the Veneto-Cretan Tradition.

I prepared my own little offering during my artist residency in July. Knowing  that I would have to post my icons, and that sending great hunks of wood and gesso across Europe would be expensive, I decided to make a virtue of necessity and treat it as an exercise in painting tiny. My smallest piece is a medallion icon of Christ the Good Shepherd which measures just 4 x 6 cm. The largest is a Nativity illumination on vellum, about 10 cm across. I also re-purposed an old fob watch case to frame a miniature of Archangel Michael, 6 x 6 cm. Which makes the face about a centimetre across - the light was better in July!

Somehow I have let almost four months slip by without an update here: - the search bots will have assumed I've died, and the Google ranking has probably collapsed, but sometimes real life is more pressing than an online presence. In this time, I spent a busy month as artist in residence in medieval Gmuend, enjoying the cavernous studio space, meeting many interesting folks, both locals and tourists, and making spectacular bloomers in my broken German. Several icons went home with tourist buyers, and several birds and beasts were bought or commissioned locally. During the time there, I made some miniatures for an upcoming exhibition and finally finished my latest Icon of the Nativity, which gratifyingly was scooped up off the desk while it was still drying and taken to Germany. I will save the picture for my Advent post.

A mighty long silence on this blog, not because there hasn't been any painting going on, but because as well as working on the usual clutch of summer commissions for wedding icons and so forth, I have been preparing for a month's residency in the lovely medieval town of Gmuend in southern Austria. Besides being an exquisitely preserved medieval town - fortress, town walls, dungeons, the works - Gmuend runs a distinguished arts programme and is host to  a busy artistic community. The town is currently holding a Matisse exhibition in the Stadtturmgalerie, and as of this morning will be hosting me for a month in the Altstadtgalerie. There I get to display my icons and illuminations and work in public, and struggle along in German with interested visitors. This will be an amusing challenge, as my German is still rudimentary and I generally prefer to hide away......

The first time I painted a crucifix it was back in 2010. I hadlaunched my website gallery and it was one of the first enquiries I received. I was thrilled. The client had just restored a house on Orkney and wanted a painted crucifix for it. (He asked why I wasn't advertising in The Church Times or The Tablet: but if you've ever inquired about the prices in those two publications you'll know one would have to be more of a Damien Hurst than a penniless iconographer to afford any space there.) That first crucifix of mine was of the type known as 'Christus patiens', showing a dead Christ, eyes closed, bloodied, hanging limp and twisted from his nails. This is the style of crucifix we in Western Europe see more often than the older Byzantine type - 'Christus gloriosus' - where Jesus is shown upright with arms outstretched, eyes open. The famous Franciscan Cross of St Damiano is of this kind.

I recently sent off a commission for two more wonderful Celtic saints - and some more vermilion as it happens, always a passion of mine. Everyone knows of St Kevin, ascetic and abbot, hermit in the Irish wilds for many years. He is feted in verse in the immortal but irreverent Dubliners song ("There was an old Glendalough saint, renowned for his learning and piety. His manners were curious and quaint, and he looked upon girls with disparity"): and in the beautiful poem by Seamus Heaney which meditates on the legend of the blackbird which laid an egg in St Kevin's oustretched hand as he prayed. The poem reveals this parable of Christian self-sacrifice and suffering more eloquently and completely than I ever could either in paint or poetry.

St Melangell's life in Wales is well attested though less written on than Kevin's. Her shrine is still to be visited in Powys and was restored in 1992. St Melangell's legend is of a hare pursued by a hunting nobleman which bounded up and took refuge from the hounds in the folds of her cloak. Reputedly the hare runs fastest uphill and so symbolises the ascent of the human soul escaping the powers of darkness. I am mentally incorporating these two in my 'some day' iconographic project on the new creation.

In the Eastern Orthodox church it is customary to give the bride and groom a pair of icons, Christ Pantocrator and the Theotokos (Mother of God). The icons are a tangible witness to their vows before God and form the basis of the family's prayer corner.

This diptych is my own slightly Italianate interpretation of the Wedding Icons, the hand-gilded and embellished frame and the cosmic background of stars inspired by an old Florentine frame I spied in an antique shop.

Never work with children, animals or (I will add) unfamiliar scripts. St Ephrem (also spelled Ephraim) of Syria was a great theologian and hymn writer of the 4th century whose work seems to have fallen out of use in the West. Some time back I illuminated my own translation of his most famous prayer, though to my chagrin it has not sold yet.

My client for this new icon is an academic and scholar of Syriac, and I rashly agreed to copy the quotation in the original if it could be written out for me. The letters are less than a millimetre high, painted with a 00000 sable brush and written from right to left, as one might expect. Much gnashing of teeth has gone into this. Needless to say my first attempt was unreadable nonsense, but I am assured that the new improved version reads "Praise to the Lord of Nature; and glory to the Lord of Scripture" - or something acceptably close!

​Gregory in Poland contacted me to ask if I would make available a new image of the Venerable Matt Talbot, as he owes his life to the (yet to be declared) saint and is using all his personal resources to publish prayer cards and spread the devotion over the web.

Matt Talbot is known as the saint in overalls, though I think that's a bit off the mark, since he is wearing a perfectly respectable working man's suit in the only photograph we have of him. And he made it his custom to appear very neat and tidy in public. It was a great privilege to research this remarkable story. Outwardly he lived a completely obscure working class life in Victorian and Edwardian Dublin, living quietly through rebellion and unrest, world war and civil war, as well as enduring the daily deprivations of a labourer's life in those harsh times. Only his sudden death in the street on the way to Mass one Sunday revealed the extraordinary 'real' life he led: he was found to be wearing chains under his clothes, those chains still to be seen among his relics. After taking the pledge in his late twenties, through a life of religious devotion and self-mortification he had overcome his alcoholic addiction, educated himself to read works of theology and spent his private life in prayer and contemplation. He is a champion for people around the world fighting addiction to alcohol and drugs.

The photograph in which Matt Talbot appears is a grainy sepia group picture, taken with his workmates in the workshop. His face enlarges to nothing but a smudge, but one can just make out a face in later middle age, bright eyes, a receding hairline, a copious moustache and a certain set of the chin. For the details of his earthly appearance, we have to rely nearly as much on inspiration as we do for his early Celtic predecessors, but the course of his life is much better attested.