Ian Knowles
Born in 1962 in Cheltenham Gloucestershire, I have always had a love for art, especially that of the Church. As a small boy at infant school I remember trying to get a very large model of a church constructed of grocery boxes and stained glass windows made of sweet wrappers, onto the school bus, unsuccessfully!
I fell in love with icons while on holiday in Greece, at the age of 18. Though I am now a Roman Catholic, and raised as an Anglican, from my early teens my faith in Jesus Christ was deeply felt and this art connected instantly with it. During that holiday in Athens I stumbled across a tiny, ancient Byzantine church, and I sensed all of that faith focused in a very living and numinous way in the holy images. They were glinting under layers of candle smoke as they caught the beams of sunlight pouring in from a window, high up in the small dome. At that moment my love affair with the Icon had begun! Here I discovered, intuitively, that beauty saves.
As an undergraduate I studied theology at Keble College, Oxford, and later at Heythrop College, London as well as undertaking ministerial training in the Church of England and later in the Catholic Church. This has given me a deep appreciation of the theology and liturgical life which is the context in which icons live and are made.
I took up the vocation of an iconographer in 2007 after an apprenticeship with my dear friend Aidan Hart, and shortly after my work brought me to the ancient Christian communities of the Holy Land. I have worked closely with the Orthodox, Latin and Melkite communities here and several of their monastic communities.
I now spend most of my time in Bethlehem close to the Church of the Nativity, where I am Principal of the Bethlehem Icon Icon School, which I founded in 2012 as part of the Bethlehem Icon Centre, of which I was the first Director. This is the only such institution in the Middle East, and while ecumenical and independent, is under the Patronage of the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem and All the East. The aim is to have fully handed over the institution into the care of the local Palestinian Christians by 2022.
My most significant work is perhaps Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls, painted on the separation wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, just before the entrance to the Emmanuel Greek Catholic Monastery. Thousands of pilgrims make their way to this bleak spot to pray for a just peace for the peoples of the Holy Land and beyond. The most prestigious work to date is the project at Lichfield Cathedral in the UK, where together with a group of my students, we have produced two of eventually three immense icons which have transformed the nave of this ancient foundation. Perhaps my most moving and enjoyable work was the Icon of the Saviour, for the Pope's visit to the Anglican church in Rome. It was an immense privilege to the present when the Holy Father blessed the icon, and a great joy to be presented to him at the end of the service, when I was also able to give to him a copy of the prayer to Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls.
I teach the Prince's School of Traditional Arts Certificate in Icon Painting, which forms the key course at the Icon School, as well as ongoing formation in icon painting. We also offer short, intensive courses, and I also teach annually at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. I am visiting tutor to the Rowington Icon Group in the Anglican Diocese of Coventry,
From time to time I offer occasional courses in various places...the next one will be in Port Elizabeth in South Africa!
I fell in love with icons while on holiday in Greece, at the age of 18. Though I am now a Roman Catholic, and raised as an Anglican, from my early teens my faith in Jesus Christ was deeply felt and this art connected instantly with it. During that holiday in Athens I stumbled across a tiny, ancient Byzantine church, and I sensed all of that faith focused in a very living and numinous way in the holy images. They were glinting under layers of candle smoke as they caught the beams of sunlight pouring in from a window, high up in the small dome. At that moment my love affair with the Icon had begun! Here I discovered, intuitively, that beauty saves.
As an undergraduate I studied theology at Keble College, Oxford, and later at Heythrop College, London as well as undertaking ministerial training in the Church of England and later in the Catholic Church. This has given me a deep appreciation of the theology and liturgical life which is the context in which icons live and are made.
I took up the vocation of an iconographer in 2007 after an apprenticeship with my dear friend Aidan Hart, and shortly after my work brought me to the ancient Christian communities of the Holy Land. I have worked closely with the Orthodox, Latin and Melkite communities here and several of their monastic communities.
I now spend most of my time in Bethlehem close to the Church of the Nativity, where I am Principal of the Bethlehem Icon Icon School, which I founded in 2012 as part of the Bethlehem Icon Centre, of which I was the first Director. This is the only such institution in the Middle East, and while ecumenical and independent, is under the Patronage of the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem and All the East. The aim is to have fully handed over the institution into the care of the local Palestinian Christians by 2022.
My most significant work is perhaps Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls, painted on the separation wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, just before the entrance to the Emmanuel Greek Catholic Monastery. Thousands of pilgrims make their way to this bleak spot to pray for a just peace for the peoples of the Holy Land and beyond. The most prestigious work to date is the project at Lichfield Cathedral in the UK, where together with a group of my students, we have produced two of eventually three immense icons which have transformed the nave of this ancient foundation. Perhaps my most moving and enjoyable work was the Icon of the Saviour, for the Pope's visit to the Anglican church in Rome. It was an immense privilege to the present when the Holy Father blessed the icon, and a great joy to be presented to him at the end of the service, when I was also able to give to him a copy of the prayer to Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls.
I teach the Prince's School of Traditional Arts Certificate in Icon Painting, which forms the key course at the Icon School, as well as ongoing formation in icon painting. We also offer short, intensive courses, and I also teach annually at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. I am visiting tutor to the Rowington Icon Group in the Anglican Diocese of Coventry,
From time to time I offer occasional courses in various places...the next one will be in Port Elizabeth in South Africa!
