Ancient icons of saints portray everyone as old, white, expressionless, and hard to tell apart. While this is part of an long tradition that has its merit, I believe that it can make the saints unrelatable and, by association, make christianity unrelatable, too.

 

My goal was to re-imagine these extraordinary people as modern, everyday humans... because that is exactly what they were, and their stories are just like ours. They show us that we can all be saints, and can find role models and hope in the story of someone who has gone through what we are going through before us.

 

The saints experienced every emotion, trial, and joy that we can experience, but they also reached beyond themselves and made their lives and communities so much better and more full of love.

 

In these paintings, I have tried to make a point to prove that fact. Each image is of a real person that lived and is now called a saint, but is portrayed as they might look if they were living today. 

 

I have corrected ethnicities to show the Church’s more widespread, though hidden, diversity. I have given each a character or personality and a real human expression to better relate to them. I have given each a style and a modern twist to show their character.

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These icons are also traditional, though, in the ways that backgrounds are kept to solid colors, the original ancient Greek (or as close to it as we can get) lettering spells out each saints' name, and details, poses, and symbols are mimicked from original icons, too.

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You may notice that some of these pieces have a noticeable wood texture, cracks, or imperfections. To further the notion of extraordinary coming from ordinary, I have painted each on a discarded or thrifted piece of wood. Much like the saints, each plaque once forgotten was transformed and is now revered.