Category: Watercolour

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

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

St Joseph and Jesus (2024)

19/3/2024

Happy Feast of St Joseph.
Painted 14 March 2024

‘St Joseph and Jesus (2024)’,
Vincent Cavanagh, 2024

This painting may have only taken a day to paint, but it was a whole year—and two months—in the making. The product of a deadline that I didn’t think that I was even supposed to be working towards and God’s Timing. Aack!

Leaving the histrionics aside, the photograph that this picture of St Joseph and the child Jesus is based upon was taken at a local church just before mass. A father was sitting with his family in a pew, about three rows over, holding his sleeping youngest son over his shoulder. One of those “take a photo or regret it”–moments from God.

In the end, very little actually changed from the photograph—well, apart from changing clothes to robes, adding head coverings, and including hair on the back of St Joseph’s head, of course.

Holy Family (detail), William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 1860 ( Reference )

Colour–wise, I do admit taking a very strong inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt’s The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, his effort of producing an ethnographically correct depiction of “Christ Among the Doctors” (of the Jewish Law), for which he travelled through the Middle East searching first-hand for information about Jewish customs and finding models for the figures he wished to depict.

He was very specific in including Biblical symbolism in his work: the colours of Jesus’ robes being the same blue, purple, and crimson that God instructed Moses to use for the veils in the Tent of Meeting as well as in the robes for Aaron the High Priest (Exodus 26 and 28, respectively).

The one–and–a–half day deadline (getting back to the histrionics) was because the whole reason behind this rush was the intention to gift a printed version of ‘St Joseph and Jesus (2024)’ to the housemates of the Joseph House, a men's discernment house in the Diocese of Broken Bay, at a youth event on the night of the day after the day I had left to paint the picture by.

This whole hectic schedule of events was due to a conflicting parish event after the youth night and the lateness of the St Joseph’s Day Eve party at Joseph House being on at a prohibitively late time for me to attend.

In the end the picture was printed (Thank God!) and present to the housemates, and it should now be hanging somewhere inside Joseph House.

Vincent Cavanagh
19 Mar 2024

Now, as for an update on my previous update about working on writing down my experiences of WYD Lisbon, that’s no longer moving forward. I’m not joking when I write that it was a commandment from on high. And given how much I was reliving certain emotions to an unhealthy amount, I’m more than alright with just letting it drop and focusing on what God actually wants me to be focused on instead.

Ask God before you leap into things whether you should be leaping into them at all.

P.S. Also, the writing was the reason that I only had a single day left to paint Joseph and Jesus. (Face palm) Oi vey!

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

St Charles Lwanga, Ugandan Martyr

20/7/2023

Pencilled 17 Jul 2023.
Painted 18 Jul 2023.

St Charles Lwanga, one of the Ugandan Martyrs.
He was a strong protector of young men from sexual predation and advocate of chastity.

He was martyred at the age of 26 when he refused to renounce his faith in Christ Jesus, in the year 1886.

For a far more in-depth look at St Charles Lwanga than I could ever attempt, read this reflection by Bishop Robert Barron on Word on Fire here.

And for the histories other Martyrs of Uganda, visit the Basilica of the Ugandan Martyrs Catholic Shrine, Namugongo, website here.

Vincent Cavanagh
20 Jul 2023

St Augustine Zhao Rong

7/7/2023

Sketched 29 Jun 2023.
Painted 6 Jul 2023.

St Augustine Zhao Rong, a former prison guard from Wuchuan who was converted by the testimony of the missionaries and Chinese Christians that he guarded and escorted to trial before his baptism into the faith in 1776.

After this he became a diocesan priest on 10 May 1781 and went on to proclaim the gospel and life of Jesus Christ to his fellow countrymen in rural areas. He was later captured and tortured, dying in the coldest part of 1815.

He and his fellow Chinese martyrs from the period between 1648 to 1930 were canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000.

For more details read this article from Society of Saints.

Vincent Cavanagh
7 Jul 2023

Caroline Chisholm (1808 – 1877)

6/3/2023

Painted 2–4 March 2023.

Rather than fail admirably at trying to condense the epic life of Mrs Chisholm into a few measly paragraphs, I will direct you instead to the Friends of Caroline Chisholm website for a greater insight to her and her works than I could ever attempt to do justice within the confines of this blog.

Link to the Mrs Chisholm website.

St Peter Chanel, S.M.

1/3/2023

Painted 23–24, 26 Feb 2023.

St Peter Chanel is the Protomartyr of Oceania, and Patron of Wallis and Futuna.
He was a French Marist father and religious superior of seven fellow Marist missionaries sent out to the region, having left France on the 24th of December 1836.

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Blog

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)

One–Knight Comedy

St Joseph and Jesus (2024)

Happy New Year and all that

St Charles Lwanga, Ugandan Martyr

St Augustine Zhao Rong

Caroline Chisholm (1808 – 1877)

St Peter Chanel, S.M.

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