Friar Alejandro Arias is a 22-year-old Conventual Franciscan who is in formation to be a Franciscan Brother. Originally from Colombia, Friar Alejandro began painting around the age of 12.
Ten years later, and despite no formal training, he presented one of his works to the Habsburg family.
“You don’t paint an icon: you write the story of God, which talks through the icon,” Friar Alejandro tells me from Silver Spring, Maryland. “In iconography, there’s a lot of discipline. It’s not just me sitting down and painting it, it’s me sitting down and praying with it. If I’m painting an image of the Blessed Mother, I have to pray to the Blessed Mother to help me paint the art.”
