About Symeon
Symeon has been working as a liturgical artist for over 30 years. While he is best known for his work as an iconographer, when the occasion merits, he also teaches, draws, builds, writes, and walks the land. He currently lives with his family in Edmonton, Alberta, who, from time to time, help in his different artistic endeavours.
A love of simple beauty naturally tunes Symeon’s hand and eye, and his mind travails the rambling thoughts necessary to tell a good story. This makes his perception of the world around him unique, but from it, he has cultivated a sense of wonder and curiosity. Drawing from his Catholic faith, family, and the land, he paints the cosmos inspired by each’s stories, traditions and presence.
Over his many years of working as an artist, countless friends have taught and blessed Symeon and supported both him and his art. Every morning, he begins his day’s work in gratitude to the wife and children—as well as the teachers, priests, monks, scientists, writers, craftsmen, farmers, patrons, curators, and even the occasional messenger of God—who have helped in his work in their love and generosity.
Latest Posts
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Conestoga Blue
Ever since I did the 100 Mile ART Project for the city of Cambridge in 2008, the studio has used indigo for its blue pigment. Finding a local blue in southern Ontario was one of the project’s biggest challenges. As with most of the work, it was the fantastic community that formed around the project …
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How to Plant Woad Seed
Since a few people have asked for more details about how to plant woad seed before the winter snows get too deep, my daughter and I decided to create a short video about how we do it here at the studio. Please feel free to ask for additional information in the comments section below, and …
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Sharing Woad Seeds
If you’re someone who follows what the Conestoga Iconographic Studio is doing, you’ll know that we really like the colours we create here in the village. And, one of our favourite local colours is the woad blue we make every year. Creating indigo blue from woad plants goes back into Neolithic history, and the colour …
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Woad Blue
It seems to me that all blues are the colour of the air—and this is certainly the case for woad blue. As the fall season comes to Canada, the hazy sky of summer clears and becomes a blue as deep as eternity offset by the flaming yellows and reds of the trees’ autumn leaves. It …
Conestoga Icons
When Symeon was ordained as an iconographer in 2002, he was given a two-part commission by his teacher—First, to go and set up a studio (which became The Conestoga Iconographic Studio) and second, to evangelize by developing a style of iconography translated for the Americas. Realizing the way in which the land has inspired every culture through mankind’s history, Symeon made the choice to root his studio’s iconographic practice to the land upon which it stood in the little village of Conestoga in Ontario, Canada. And, through years of adventure, learning, and toil, he came to receive from the land all the lumber, pigments, and binders necessary to create an icon’s panel, paint, and varnish. It is because of this approach to making an icon that the studio has affectionally received the unofficial motto, “There must be a harder way to do this.”
As was hoped, working with such wonderful local materials and listening to their colours has blessed Symeon’s hand and eye. Through the influence of these local colours and the study of liturgical styles based on such beautiful limited means—such as the Romanesque or ancient Coptic—a distinctive style of iconography which resonates with many people living in North America continues to be practiced and developed in the studio. Through this style, the studio hopes to bring the real presence of Jesus Christ and his saints—those men and women fully alive in the Spirit—into the lives of those living here.
Today, the studio’s icons—all painted out of the colourful dirt pigments harvested along the village’s river—can be found in homes, chapels, and churches across North America and Europe, with high-quality art prints from each of these blessing countless homes around the whole world.
To inquire about commissioning an icon for your own church or home, please contact Symeon directly, or visit the studio’s Fine Art Prints section to see some of the paper icons currently available.