Welcome to my Icon Painting website. I have been painting icons for only three years, having spent most of my career in the film and television industry as a designer, editor and director. Sacred Art, or Byzantium Art, is an artform I find supremely blissful and absorbing.
I love the way that they are free from my ego - they are beyond myself. I love that they are a truly ecological artform using Mother Nature's elements and no synthetic constructions - egg, wood, lime, natural pigments, gold. And I love that they are ancient and also eternal, depicting a sacred heritage, a timeless Heaven, and an all powerful Creator.
Something we are in danger of losing in New Zealand is the sacred view. Materialism is short sighted. Consumerism demands we are satisfied now. Materialism plans for a few years. Consumerism has no future. Materialism has no soul, no spirit, and is a slow unhappy death. Materialism is not our god.

Gaylene Anne Barnes
Dip.F.A.,(Computer Art), B.A. (Art History)

"The saints are not visible to mankind, just as a blind man cannot see the light. The saints may only be seen in the mind's eyes and these are the eyes an icon is addressed to. An icon itself is not so much a painting as it is a prayer, hence it's majestic simplicity and peacefulness. All that is depicted in it reflects divine orderliness."