(scroll below for pictures)

Artist Patrick Stewart, a member of Madonna House for more than twenty years, has a passion to paint. Inspired by God and the beauty of nature, his oil paintings are filled with the radiant light of sunrises on the rivers, lakes, and landscapes of this area.

Marysia Kowalchyk has been a member of Madonna House since 1974. The Eastern Christian aspect of the Madonna House spirituality has been a source of great nourishment for her. In 1993 she began a study of icon writing / painting and has studied with several master iconographers. Her work can be found in churches, chapels and private homes in Canada, United States, and Europe. She continues to work in a studio in Combermere.

“Painting is for me a response to the experience of light and color, and to the beauty I see in nature and in art. It is the search to know, to discover this visual and interior beauty through the act of painting a human face, a simple bowl, or a landscape. Living within Madonna House for the past twenty years, this response has come to encompass our communal life, our daily work and liturgical prayer, offering to me, and thus to the painting, a reflection on the inner harmony and tension of reality.”

“When I joined Madonna House I did some carving as a relaxation. But when I was assigned to one of our mission houses, I saw that the chapel was in need of some art work: there were no representations of the saints in the chapel. So, in my spare time, I started to carve the saints and images for the liturgy. I began to see that the Lord wanted me to put images of the saints back into a few churches. I understood that we needed to be reminded of the Communion of Saints.

Some modern liturgical art is often a personal statement of an artist’s faith experience, using symbols very particular to themselves. Such images are often not accessible to most people. If I use traditional images in new ways, there is a better chance of their being understandable for the devotion of more people, as a living place of meeting with the saint, person to person.

I am amazed by what emerges from this process. I am not saying that everything I do is great; but it is usually better than what I expected. “Giving God space” is the key to giving birth to beauty. It is the Lord who gives the increase, the Lord who takes what little gestures we make and transforms them into something much better than we can imagine. As Scripture says, “It is you, Lord, who accomplish what we have done” (Isaiah 26:12). When I read this line of Scripture, it reminded me of these experiences I often have when I am carving, of how my own work comes about. When I finish a piece of carving, I am conscious that usually God has had a part in the work.”