British Painter Ian Knowles Restores Christian Art Form Of Iconography At West Bank

The wall dividing Israel and the West Bank was filled with different graffiti sprayed onto the concrete slabs. At the corner from the Israeli checkpoint, you can find a gold portrait of the Virgin Mary done in a 1,500-year-old Byzantine style.

According to The Telegraph, the image is the work of Ian Knowles, a British artist who lives in Bethlehem and the image was known as "Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls". He was reluctant on doing the artwork at first because it was dangerous upon doing it, the artist must use a ladder.

While in just a few hundred yards you can see the heavily armed Israeli troops but he was convinced by the nuns who was praying at the wall each week for the wall to come down. Believing that the icons are the gateways through which heaven meets earth. 

He was trying to revive the Christian art form of iconography. He used rich colors of the paint instead of using stained glass windows to make the icon glow. According to Elias Icons, he was captivated by the beauty of the icons when he was 18 years old during a holiday in Athens he stumbled across an ancient Byzantine church. 

He sensed all of that faith focused in a very living and spiritual way in the holy images glinting under layers of candle smoke as they caught the beams of sunlight pouring in from a window high up in the small dome. The iconography was threatened to be forgotten during the Communist rule of Russia and Eastern Europe where the Orthodox Church banned painting of religious images. 

But Mr. Knowles is playing a part of bringing it back once more for the world to appreciate its beauty. Today he is teaching the art of iconography to local Palestinians who want to learn and also open to the foreign visitors. 

TagsBritish Painter, Ian Knowles, Portrait of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls, The Christian Art Revival, Byzantine Church, Orthodox Church