Category: Colour

St Clare of Assisi (2025)

3/7/2025

This portrait of St Clare of Assisi was painted on 5 June 2025, but as with most important artworks it took roughly a month of researching, thinking through, planning, and revising initial ideas before I finally started on the actual painting part—two days before the self-imposed deadline. I wanted it to be ready for to give as a birthday prayer card to a fellow pilgrim to WYD Lisbon, 2023.

St Clare is the first spiritual daughter of St Francis of Assisi, having seen him renounce himself of his father and his family’s wealth when she was twelve-years old. She later joined him and the minor friars at the age of eighteen, and co-founder of the Order of Poor Ladies, more commonly known today as the “Poor Clares”. The Rule incorporates much of the original vision of St Francis, as well as a little Benedictine wisdom.

In this painting she is seated with her lap open to all who are finding life difficult and seek her intercession. With one hand she is holding aloft a golden Monstrance containing the Eucharistic presence of Christ, representing when she held aloft the same Eucharistic presence when various marauding armies came to lay siege to Assisi during the 13th Century and from which shone so bright a light of heaven from the Monstrance that those same armies fled, leaving the city and convent of the Poor Clares safe from harm and destruction.

Outside the Church of San Damiano, Assisi, during the 2023 WYD Lisbon pilgrimage through Italy. (Photo: by Author)

On the top left of the painting is an image of the San Damiano cross from which St Francis received the vision of Christ speaking to him, ‘… go and rebuild my church …’

The original San Damiano cross was the altarpiece inside the Church of San Damiano (depicted on the top right of the painting), it was moved when the Poor Clares left the San Damiano monastery in 1257 AD to the Basilica of St Clare in Assisi and they have to this day continued to guard it with great solitude because it St Francis had gifted San Damiano to St Clare and her companions for use as a convent in 1212 AD.

In recent times there have been social media testimonies of women being visited by St Clare when in deep difficulty, and saying, ‘here are my soft hands, here is my soft lap’. These graces have resulted in significant conversions.

Vincent Cavanagh
3 July 2025

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2025 Calendar: Now Available!

28/11/2024

Orders are now Closed

After having received them from the printers this morning, I can announce that my 2025 Calendar is now available for the coming year. The 2025 Calendar is a return both to sharing my artwork as well as the saints (and not yet declared saints) of the Catholic Church.

— Cost for the 2025 Calendars is $30 AUD each, plus postage (within Australia), with a deal for three (3) calendars at $80 AUD.

— Postage is as follows:
+$3 AUD for 1 calendar
+$4 AUD for 2*
+$6 AUD for 3*
* delivered in the same envelope.

— For International postal orders we will arrange Air Mail costs appropriately, on an order-by-order basis.

You can place your order through the form found under the Contact page or by messaging me via Facebook, or talk to me in person.

Vincent Cavanagh
28 Nov 2024

* 2025 Calendar Flip-Through GIF added — 6 December 2024.

Our Lady of La Vang, Viet Nam (2024)

22/8/2024

Painted 20–21 August 2024

On this Feast Day of The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (22 August), I am relieved to finally reveal my attempt at portraying the apparition of Our Blessed Mother in 1798 to gathered Vietnamese Christians taking refuge from the persecution by the Nguyen Dynasty in the jungle forest in central Việt Nam, near the village of Quang Tri.

The origins of this project go back to November last year (2023) with a visit to the seminary used by the Diocese, but research for this painting started in earnest on 5 July 2024.

For more information about the apparition and Pope John Paul II’s later involvement read this detailed summary about Our Lady of La Vang at The Miracle Hunter website here.

This is the handed down Description of the Virgin from that same Miracle Hunter summary:

One evening, according to tradition, a lady of great beauty appeared to the refugees in the jungle, clad in white and surrounded by light, holding the infant Jesus in her arms, with two charming boys holding torches at her side. The lady walked back and forth several times in front of the Christians, her feet touching the ground.
Even the non-Christians who were there witnessed the vision.”

I opted to save myself some artistic headache and stress by deciding to only focus on the Virgin, child, and torch bearing youths rather than attempting to include the onlooking Christians and have even less room for the actual apparition. I think that that decision has born itself out well.

Vincent Cavanagh
22 August 2024

Peace, an illustration (2024)

27/7/2024

Illustrated 26 July 2024

It has been a long while since I lasted did a picture for myself or “published” one on this website.
Hopefully this may be the end of the illustrative drought, pax.

PEACE:
Summer daisies,
Bubbles,
Snow-capped mountains,
Gliding swans,
and Bountiful clouds.

Vincent Cavanagh
27 July 2024

One–Knight Comedy

30/3/2024

Surrealism incoming!
Illustrated 30 March 2024

Vincent Cavanagh, 2024

A spotlight on Bishop Stumbers’ short-lived career in stand-up comedy.

Congratulations to anyone who “gets” the cameo appearances on the far side table ;)
With apologies to Messrs Astley and Baker.

Vincent Cavanagh
30 Mar 2024 / Holy Saturday

New Year, New Look.

7/1/2024

Website refresh for 2024.

Tis' the Season to be Changin'

As you may have surmised, I have once again change this website's appearance. Cosmetically, it is not too much of a departure from the previous design, but it does have one or two improvements on the later. The main one being a dividing line between blogpost titles and the start of the post. (Yes, I am that picky over visual design.)

On the formatting side of things, I have broken down the WYD 2023 Blog Archive posts into Country sections (e.g., Italy, Portugal, etc.) to give a visual break and create landmarks for readers to navigate with.

I have also begun implementing sectioning my Artwork pages, breaking them down by Yearly Quarter (e.g., Q1, Q2, and so on.) If for no other reason than being visually neater.

Also, I do prefer this new website theme's rendering of hyperlinks with underlining. Visually helpful for someone looking at this site with their phone set to black-and-white mode or for those who are colour-blind.

Once again, until next and Happy New Year.

Vincent Cavanagh
7 Jan 2024

Happy New Year and all that

1/1/2024

Illustrated 1 January 2023

'Bishop Stumbers: All Nog-ged Out'

Finally putting to paper an idea that's been knocking about in my head since around about Christmas Eve.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to you all.

Vincent Cavanagh
1 Jan 2023

Image Process 2023-05-27

27/5/2023

St Agatha of Sicily: Patron of breast cancer, bell–founders, Sicily, Catania, and nurses.

It's been a long time waiting for this image to finally arrive.

Vincent Cavanagh
~27 May 2023

Happy Mother's Day from Down Under

13/5/2023

Artwork created 13 May 2023.

"Koala Hug ~ Mother's Day (2023)"

Vincent Cavanagh
~13 May 2023

First Holy Martyrs of Rome

27/4/2023

Artwork created 19–27 April 2023.

A divinely-inspired, Roman mosaic–styled depiction of a few of the many different ways in which the early Christians were martyred in Rome, under the persecution of emperor Nero in AD 64.

"Nero's Torches", Henry Siemiradzki, 1876

The top panel has much inspiration from the painting Nero’s Torches, by Henry Siemiradzki in 1876, showing both men and women being burnt alive after the Great Fire of Rome before the gaze of gathered the Roman elite.

Illumination of St Andrew, East Anglian missal, c. 1320

Panel two is informed by an image of St Andrew’s crucifixion found within an East Anglian missal, circa 1320.

And the final panel illustrates the Roman capital punishment of damnatio ad bestias (condemnation to beast), or what is more commonly referred to as “being thrown to the lions.”

I freely admit that the Christians before said lions are heavily referenced from Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer (1883).

The slowly circling beasts themselves are a synthesis of various depictions of lions found in extant Roman mosaic art.

"The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer", Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1883

The memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome is held on June 30th, the day after the celebration of the Feast of St Peter and St Paul.

Vincent Cavanagh
~ 27 Apr 2023

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St Clare of Assisi (2025)

Comments closed
due to spam.

2025 Calendar: Now Available!

Orders are now Closed

Our Lady of La Vang, Viet Nam (2024)

Peace, an illustration (2024)

One–Knight Comedy

New Year, New Look.

Happy New Year and all that

Image Process 2023-05-27

Happy Mother's Day from Down Under

First Holy Martyrs of Rome

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