St Leonards Church

Watercolor 15 x 22”, 

As I painted the interior of St. Leonard’s Church, I found myself slowing down in ways I once resisted. The architecture does that to you. It asks for patience. It invites silence. The soaring arches, the rhythm of columns, and the luminous religious paintings above the altar are not merely decorative—they are visual prayers, built to lift the eye and steady the soul.

The painted figures overhead, softened by time and candle smoke, feel less like illustrations and more like witnesses. Their gestures, halos, and gentle colors seem to float between heaven and earth, reminding us that faith has always relied on beauty to express what words cannot. The church itself becomes a vessel—stone, pigment, and light working together to create a space of reverence.

As I grow older, I find myself drawn more often to these interiors. Perhaps it is because churches hold a deep sense of continuity. Generations have passed through these pews carrying joy, grief, hope, and doubt. When I paint a church interior, I am not only recording architecture—I am acknowledging the accumulated presence of countless lives and prayers. That feels increasingly important to me now.

Watercolor, with all its transparency and unpredictability, feels like the right language for this work. Light moves through the paper much as it moves through stained glass. Forms emerge, dissolve, and reappear—much like faith itself, which is never fixed but always unfolding.

Painting church interiors has become, for me, an act of gratitude. A way of bearing witness. A quiet affirmation that beauty, belief, and time are inseparable—and that in these sacred spaces, we are gently reminded to look upward, inward, and back to what endures.