Iconography & Early Church
Sister Theovouli, Dip. Art & Design 2nd. Hons, Certificate Orth. Studies, Diploma Orth. Studies.
Sister Theovouli has studied with iconographers Solrunn Ness and Aidan Hart, and undertaken specialist studies with an emphasis on patristics, with early church & monastic history. She has painted icons for churches and private clients and taught icon workshops and an online icon course for some years.
Sister Theovouli is from a Welsh farming family. Her grandfather migrated to England. She grew up in the ancient Welsh Marches village of Cardington, and was educated in Coalbrookdale, Shrewsbury and Leeds, specialising in Graphic Design. After a short period freelance she entered an Anglican Benedictine monastery and was later involved in retreat work, where she encountered Icon painting, for the first time. Seeking a deeper tradition, she became Roman Catholic in 1975, during which period she developed as an icon painter and teacher, repeating her monastic formation in a Catholic Benedictine community, and later leading a project to renew skete monasticism in the Highlands of Scotland. During this time she completed many public and private icon commissions.
Becoming at last struck by the inconsistency of teaching the Orthodox tradition, while not fully living it, she converted to Orthodoxy in 2015, being received by Fr. Stephen in the Church of 318 Fathers, in Shropshire, and – almost immediately – entering an Orthodox monastery in Crete, where she worked in the Agia Grapheia. Returning to Shrewsbury in 2021, because of ill health, she has since assisted where appropriate, in Shrewsbury, continuing to give Icon Tuition via the Online Course, developing biographies for the British Synaxarion and occasionally lecturing for the Certificate Course at TMES.
