The Bethlehem

Icon School 

 I founded the Bethlehem Icon School in 2010 running intensive one week courses at the Emmanuel Monastery in Bethlehem. We brought people to Bethlehem from around the world not to pass through but to stay, paint and pray. I also taught these courses occasionally in the UK, for example at the Royal West of England Academy, and in 2017 in South Africa, all extensions of the method I developed in Bethlehem.

I founded the Bethlehem Icon Centre in 2011to help restore iconography as a vibrant part of the local Christian culture in Palestine and to help local Christians master the art of icon painting to a professional level. I taught the Prince's School of Traditional Arts Icon Painting course there, as well as running on-going classes. We also included students from as far afield as Australia and Canada.

I took some of my Palestinian students to the UK in 2016 and 2018 to help me with the Lichfield Icons, a superb formation experience for them. We were privileged to be invited to Highgrove, to meet with our now King Charles III.

Sadly, after disagreements about the direction the Centre needed to develop in order to move forward I and a majority of the Board decided we had no option but to stand down and let the assertive minority do as they wished.

 I continued my work as the Bethlehem Icon School on my own and it has now evolved into the  Arbor Vitae Icon Academy and the Academy Course in Icon Painting.

The experience at the Icon Centre was one filled with many great memories and many, many blessings.  Here you can see a glimpse of what we were able to achieve during that time. The place was one of incredible, and rare, peace. It offered professional training and several of the graduates continue to work together, a couple at the Bethlehem Icon Centre and three others having founded their own workshop, the Holy Land Iconographers, close to the Nativity Church. 

The Emmanuel Monastery has also now founded its own workshop, and I continue my association with them as a consultant and as an occasional tutor.

And please pray for the people of Palestine, and especially the Christians of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was not just the place where the Saviour was born, but where Herod massacred the Innocents. It continues to be a place caught up in great violence and ongoing injustice today, where the innocent suffer much. Pray for peace in Palestine and across the Holy Land.