Painting the Way

Pilgrim Festival art exhibition.

In the late spring of 1171, a monk at Christ Church priory in Canterbury, Benedict of Peterborough, began recording stories of ordinary pilgrims who travelled in search of healing miracles at the tomb of St Thomas Becket. These stories of ordinary folk were later translated into a very expensive and very high art form of stained glass, where they remain to this day.

When my life fell apart and I walked to Compostela seeking healing and meaning, I kept a record as an online journal or blog that my friend and artist Helen Wilde similarly translated into paintings. Not being mobile at the time, she walked with me in art and painted what she read into my posts. Sometimes challenging, and sometimes joyous. I returned to 75 paintings of my 35 day adventure and we decided to create an exhibition of our journey which was displayed at Canterbury Cathedral during a Pilgrim festival in 2022.

My pilgrimage was a very painful and emotional experience but it was also life changing and a celebration of life in the face of adversity. Without realising it, we were continuing the tradition of what Benedict and the stained glass artists once did here. We took a pilgrim story and told it in art.

This site also seeks to continue the tradition of recording pilgrim stories in a very modern way and find a means of depicting them in art form.