I was born in the city of Kozani, Greece in 1977, but I lived and grew up in Xanthi. My relation with the community of church and the spiritual awakening began at the age of 16, after a visit to Mount Athos.

I have always admired the depiction of people and scenes from the life of the Orthodox Church on canvas, as the tradition of icons opens the entire content of our faith before us. In 2013, while having worked for the banking industry for more than a decade, after a visit to a Hagiography Exhibition, I decided to give up on this position and deal exclusively with this art.

After learning the basic techniques next to hagiographers in my city, my quests lead me to Thessaloniki, with the help of my great teacher Georgios Sidiropoulos, a graduate of the Athoniada School of Mount Athos, who showed me new paths and guided me into finding my personal style with respect to the rules of the Byzantine tradition. Then, my acquaintance with the teacher Konstantinos Samoilis helped me to assimilate the methods and the stages of creating portable icons. The last but most valuable stop of my apprenticeship was in Kastoria, where my dear friend and hagiographer Christos Basakyros lives and works. His constant personal quests in combination with his deep knowledge of the art of Byzantine hagiography challenged me to acquire skills, completely new for me.

In 2016 I made a big dream of mine come true, to have my own work place in my city, where I can combine the art of hagiography and the creation of icons and mosaics with the promotion and distribution of monastic and ecclesiastical products.

The creation of this website is my last venture, in which I was pushed by the unprecedented conditions of everyday life that we all faced in the past few years, but also the encouragement of friends from abroad, who could not access the items they need for the practice of orthodox worship.

Strantzas Kyriakos