The majority of painted, stained and kiln fired glass you see in buildings throughout the world are created by painting in the negative. What do you mean by this I hear you say? The paint oxide is applied over the entire surface of the glass and removed to produce the tones, semi-tones and highlights. […]

  I’m well underway with the cartoons (full size drawing) for our 12 Apostles 154 square ft window – it’s a lot of figurative drawing for sure! Pictured here is when I was doing the first two sections, when the Peter cartoon was finished and I was drafting the Andrew figure. Some of you may […]

  We are pleased to have installed our 19th window at St Mary’s Kerrisdale this week! This latest one depicts St Mary Magdalene and turned out to be one of our favourites. It seemed appropriate that we were able to get the window in during the run up to Easter, in that Mary Magdalene was […]

It’s really great to be getting toward the end of this project. That sounds as though we found it really tedious! Quite the opposite in fact; Our Lady of the Valley has been a delight to work on. But now that John has finished leading all the sections and has completed cementing them (the term […]

I finished these water colour designs last year, not long after we were into the first wave of Covid. Now, the church is ready to start this 154 square foot project. I’ve spent days assessing what glass and etching and painting techniques we want to go with. I’ve started setting out the initial drawings for […]

I’ve been very busy with the full size drawings (cartoons) for the next three windows in our sequence of Old Testament windows for St. Joseph’s in Langley. They are Moses and the Exodus, Abraham and the Sacrifice of Issac, and Elijah taken up in Chariot of Fire.  I must admit to enjoying drawing the horses […]

Thought for the day: Bee well, bee happy!(detail; acid etching and glass painting, Our Lady of the Valley, currently being leaded.)

Shown here are the three sections of Our Lady of the Valley window laid out on the light table and benches, prior to the final kiln firing stage for silver stain to turn some of the details amber and gold, such as the roses, butterfly and bee. Then it’s fabrication time!

  Really pleased to have installed the next two windows in our sequence of Old Testament windows for St. Joseph’s, Langley. Our mentor used to say that he enjoyed creating really stern looking Old Testament figures with their craggier appearances, John prefers the terms slightly grumpy, or windswept and interesting. Here we have Moses and […]

I thought I’d post a few shots taken of my hubby John working on our window for Our Lady of The Valley, Coldstream BC. ~ The first photo shows John cutting the selected glass over the “cutline” structural drawing. ~ Each piece of cut glass after being trace-lined and fired is then placed on a […]

  This month marks my 20th anniversary of being elected an AMGP, an Associate of The British Society of Master Glass Painters. Their Journal is published annually in London, UK, by the BSMGP, and I always look forward to receiving it each year. It’s a wonderful collection of insightful essays on a multitude of stained […]

  Once upon a time (or last week, if you prefer) there was a sure-footed artist named John who was called upon to install our latest window at St Mary’s Church, Kerrisdale. This window depicted an awesome woman of the 12th century named Saint Hildegard. Now, upon this day it seemed that everyone wanted to […]

  I enjoyed creating the full size drawing, or cartoon as it’s known, for Our Lady of the Valley, Coldstream, BC. I’m really happy with the flow of this window and we’re looking forward to the next stage of creating the structural drawing, known as the cutline, and selecting all the beautiful colour we’ll be […]

  At last we have got around to photographing “Spirit”! Took us long enough…. We started it as an in-progress piece for an exhibition a couple of years ago, and only found the time to finish and frame it (in a beautiful oak) at the beginning of this year. it is now displayed in our studio […]

  We’re looking forward to starting the first painting stage of our 18th window for St. Mary’s, Kerrisdale. This one depicts Saint Hildegard of Bingen who was a 12th century Benedictine Abbess. I enjoyed researching her life; her accomplishments were pretty much unprecedented for a woman of that time. She is probably best known for […]

  Really pleased to have received the go-ahead for one of our next commissions (pictured is my hand painted scaled water-colour design). I’ll soon be starting to draft the full size cartoon for this 7ft diameter window for Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church in the beautiful Okanagan.

We have just completed our Moses window, which we won’t get to install for a little while yet. Here is a photo of the top section depicting Mount Sinai; John is particularly pleased with his art deco inspired clouds.

Back to some painted restoration and identifying the paint binders and techniques of the original artist to recreate a badly damaged inscription. it was gum arabic and then oil, by the way. #csiStainedGlass    

In the first part of my musing about inspiration, I wrote about my mentors; artists who directly inspired me. This time I’m thinking about an artist who I could never have met, but whose work has inspired and encouraged me. When I was in my mid teens, and I knew that I wanted a career […]

I haven’t posted anything for a while, I think like most people I’m just trying to get my head around what is happening and I don’t think there is going to be business as usual for quite some time. Clearly there is a lot of anxiety in the news and our social media feeds, and […]