An icon fit for an archbishop
Artist and iconographer Cheryll Kinsley Potter, has just completed a commission from Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and now Master of Magdalen College Cambridge.
Cheryll has been painting all her life and has worked in a variety of media including oil painting, watercolour, pastel and printmaking, but it is her beautiful icons for which she is most renowned. She always assiduously researches her icons and most are representations based on originals dating back to the Byzantine and ancient Greek era. In the spring of 2018 her work was on show at the St Endellion Festival and at Truro Cathedral, where her icons were much admired by Dr Rowan Williams – so much so that he commissioned an icon of Mary Magdalene. She created the large-scale icon shown here, made with egg tempera and gold leaf on a lime wood gessoed board – the icon now resides in Magdalene College Chapel.
Born in an army hospital in Hampshire, Cheryll spent the first sixteen years of life abroad, in Singapore, Malaya, Bahrain and finally Belgium where she was sent to a convent boarding school. Whilst the school failed to educate in the sciences, Cheryll was fully instructed in languages and art, becoming skilled at both. It was a wonderful start for someone with a natural inclination for drawing and led Cheryll, on her return to the UK, to study first at the Northwich School of Art then in 1968 at St Martin’s School of Art in London, reading fashion and textiles. Having married and had children, Cheryll’s artistic talents were neglected for a while, but in 1998 she moved to Connemara on the west coast of Ireland and began teaching in a private art school, while also accepting commissions for landscapes and portraits. Before long, Cheryll had set up her own studio and was tutoring from home. She very much enjoyed this time, regularly teaching over 65 students each week, mostly in oils. She had her first solo exhibition, 'Myth and Landscape' at the Kenny Gallery, Galway following on from successful group exhibitions including 'Five Women Artists' in Camden Town.
Cheryll came to iconography after visiting the Monasteries of Meteora in central Greece. She finds a powerful presence in the icons - a silence, a peace and a fierce beauty which she strives to recreate in all her work. After spending a week at a retreat in a monastery in Donegal learning how to create or ‘write’ an icon, Cheryll joined the Association of Iconographers of Ireland and was later commissioned by St Paul’s Arran Quay, Dublin to create an icon of The Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and following that was privately commissioned to create an icon of St Brigid. Dating back to the Byzantine Empire from the 6th century, iconography or image writing was said to be the depiction of saints and the holy family as real representations, handed down through the centuries. Originally, Orthodox monks and clerics would have ‘written’ the icon as a vehicle for prayer and it would usually have been kept in a cupboard or niche until required. The process of writing an icon is complex, involving a lime wood board coated with ‘gesso’, and sanded until smooth as porcelain. Parts of the board are gilded with gold leaf and then it is painted using a mix of pure pigment and egg yolk. An icon is stylised with ancient symbolic imagery and there is a specific order of painting, working in layers from base colours and from dark to light, while the gold detail is said to be divine light.
In 2010 Cheryll fell in love with Dominic Michaelis, an architect and engineer, and moved to Toulon in the south of France to be with him where she continued to paint and write icons. After Dominic’s death, she was persuaded to move to Tavistock two years ago and is now a member of the prestigious Drawn to the Valley group of artists, exhibiting locally. It was through this connection that her work ended up at Truro cathedral where it was seen by Dr Rowan Williams. Cheryll says it was a great honour and privilege to design an original representation of Mary Magdalene in partnership with Dr Williams who is an authority on icons.
Nichola Williams
Cheryll also teaches egg tempera and gilding and will be running two iconography workshops in 2019 for those wishing to learn the process of icon writing and share the peaceful meditative practice with this modest and remarkable artist. For more information visit cheryllkinsleypotter.com