O Come, O Come Emmanuel!
About Symeon
Symeon has been working as a liturgical artist for over 30 years. While he is best known for his work as an iconographer, when the occasion merits, he also teaches, draws, builds, writes, and walks the land. He currently lives with his family in Edmonton, Alberta, who, from time to time, help in his different artistic endeavours.
A love of simple beauty naturally tunes Symeon’s hand and eye, and his mind travails the rambling thoughts necessary to tell a good story. This makes his perception of the world around him unique, but from it, he has cultivated a sense of wonder and curiosity. Drawing from his Catholic faith, family, and the land, he paints the cosmos inspired by each’s stories, traditions and presence.
Over his many years of working as an artist, countless friends have taught and blessed Symeon and supported both him and his art. Every morning, he begins his day’s work in gratitude to the wife and children—as well as the teachers, priests, monks, scientists, writers, craftsmen, farmers, patrons, curators, and even the occasional messenger of God—who have helped in his work in their love and generosity.
Christmas 2024
Upcoming Events
Pondering The Nativity of Christ
Place: Mount Carmel Spirituality Centre, 1225 Township Rd 535, Parkland Village, AB (West of Edmonton and north of Stony Plain)/ Time: 11 am Talk (following the community’s 10 am Mass) In preparation for the celebration of the Christmas Feast in 2024, the friars of the Mt. Carmel Spirituality Centre and Symeon van Donkelaar invite you …
Advent Blog Series
During Advent, Symeon will be sharing about his recent completion of an icon of the Nativity and some of the things he loves about. To see the posts made so far, please click here.
Latest Post
The Nativity Icon: The Cave
At the centre of the Nativity icon—and, in fact, an image of Christmas complete in itself—is the stable cave. Within its dark outline, the wonder of the incarnate Christ dwells, along with his mother and a pair of animals. I think it’s fair to say the Nativity icon is especially beautiful within the iconographic canon, …
Conestoga Icons
When Symeon was ordained as an iconographer in 2002, he was given a two-part commission by his teacher—First, to go and set up a studio (which became Conestoga Icons) and second, to evangelize by developing a style of iconography translated for the Americas. Realizing the way in which the land has inspired every culture through mankind’s history, Symeon made the choice to root his studio’s iconographic practice to the land upon which it stood in the little village of Conestoga in Ontario, Canada. And, through years of adventure, learning, and toil, he came to receive from the land all the lumber, pigments, and binders necessary to create an icon’s panel, paint, and varnish. It is because of this approach to making an icon that the studio has affectionally received the unofficial motto, “There must be a harder way to do this.”
As was hoped, working with such wonderful local materials and listening to their colours has blessed Symeon’s hand and eye. Through the influence of these local colours and the study of liturgical styles based on such beautiful limited means—such as the Romanesque or ancient Coptic—a distinctive style of iconography which resonates with many people living in North America continues to be practiced and developed in the studio. Through this style, the studio hopes to bring the real presence of Jesus Christ and his saints—those men and women fully alive in the Spirit—into the lives of those living here.
Today, the studio’s icons—all painted out of the colourful dirt pigments harvested along the village’s river—can be found in homes, chapels, and churches across North America and Europe, with high-quality art prints from each of these blessing countless homes around the whole world.
To inquire about commissioning an icon for your own church or home, please contact Symeon directly, or visit the studio’s Fine Art Prints section to see some of the paper icons currently available.
Recent Icon Articles
The Return of our Icon Prints
This summer at Conestoga Icons has been focused on a project: To reintroduce the studio’s fine art icon prints. After the move to Alberta last year, all the papers and equipment used to create our prints stayed in their moving boxes while the space took shape and other work in the studio took precedence. However, …
Saints Zenaida and Philonella
Sts. Zenaida and PhilonellaThe Charitable Physicians— October 11th — The story of Zenaida and Philonella is not well known in the Catholic Church, but it really should be. These two early Christian saints were bright, intelligent women who are the first canonized medical doctors for their work as physicians in the church. Through them we …
The Soldiers and The Fiery Furnace
With the angel and the youths depicted in The Fiery Furnace, all that was left was the rendering of the soldiers in the bottom third of the icon. And, it was here that I think the vision inspired by St. Basil’s commentary on the nature of fire in consumption and illumination really took form. The …