Coming to
Fordham’s Museum of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art
Spring 2026
and to the
Cultural Arts Center of Lefkada’s Stamos Gallery
Summer of 2026
Village Saints is a project that began around 2012 when I took sketchbooks to Greece and chronicled my annual family trip to the island of Lefkada (my home away from home) according to the people I met in the towns and villages we frequented.
One cannot imagine the hospitality of the Lefkadians. They are a blunt, sometimes loud and opinionated, fiery people who will argue politics with you until the wee hours of the morning and then offer their own bed for you to sleep at night while they graciously find a spot on the floor for themselves.
At first, I photographed these villagers from afar and snuck away to draw or paint them in my book of sketches. But I noticed they were not shy to speak with me and tell me a bit about themselves when they saw I was depicting their likenesses. With this human connection, the drawings began coming to life as they meshed with honest stories of family, struggles, loves, losses, hardships and joys of everyday living.
I began the larger-than-life-sized paintings thereafter and hoped the people and their experiences might come together in an exhibition for the public. I contacted a dear friend, writing professor and poet Deanna Benjamin, to help me make these Village Saints come to life through her words. An artistic collaboration was born.
Deanna and I hope a new story of an age-old tale about simple people living imperfect, yet Godly existences may give this broken world a better view of how our own lives can and should truly be.
