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York Minster Sunrise.
“Occasionally this uninterrupted silence and the stillness of a painting can be very striking, it’s as if the painting, absolutely still, soundless, becomes a corridor - connecting the moment it represents with the moment at which you are looking at it. And something travels down that corridor, at a speed greater than light throwing into question our way of measuring time itself. ”
John Berger
Finding St. William
It’s late and I’m tired. The room is quiet and I should probably have stopped an hour ago. But I keep returning to the sketchbook with my brush and pen.
As the hours pass, I become increasingly aware that I am not working alone. There is a faint sense of an ambient presence moving beneath the surface of the paper. Not visible exactly, but there nonetheless - somewhere behind the brushstrokes, drawing me inwards. The more I work, the more I find myself in conversation with somebody who lived several centuries ago.
I’m working on a piece called Finding St. William - an artwork created to mark the 800th anniversary of the canonisation of York’s patron saint. The main focus is a series of buildings associated with William, supplemented by a curving band of images drawn from the remarkable St. William Window at York Minster.
My work is held within a concertina format bounded by orphaned Victorian Bible covers.
Running through the composition is a single continuous line connecting each building. It twists and meanders along arcades and through the pages like a lifeline - an acknowledgement of the continuity that survives within York’s streets.
The St. William window is a rare survival and includes scenes of William's life and the miracles that were associated with him: a woman poisoned with a frog, a man who has lost an eye, a group of disabled people - all are saved.
The glass is widely thought, through an accretion of stylistic evidence, to be the work of the Coventry glazier John Thornton.
In many ways the process of painting felt like a pilgrimage - throwing up its challenges and yet leading me into a deeper understanding of the people behind the glass. As I progressed, I gained an overwhelming sense of being guided by the window - not just by the narrative contained within it, but by the artist behind it.
Thornton’s visual lexicon includes hand gestures and facial expressions that change with the slightest tweak of an eyebrow or curl of a lip. They are supplemented by a vast supporting cast of communicators - cauliflower ears, bared teeth, curled toes, hairstyles, curtain hoops, buttons, bags, belts, mitres, wimples and veils. Alongside Thornton’s bulbous noses and doe eyes are luxuriant curls of hair and deeply observed folds of cloth. Long beards were clearly a speciality.
Beyond the surface stories, I started to sense the artist himself: Thornton tapping out his own morse code to the future - relaying themes that remain fundamentally human - conflict, resignation, anxiety, ambition, expectation, hope, joy, connection and identity. And yet, although it is a sight to behold, much of the detail, because of its sheer size and height, cannot be seen from ground level.
Similarly, whilst travelling around these isles and photographing some of our most remarkable medieval churches, I have repeatedly encountered extraordinary works of art hidden from view. I remember photographing stone masons at York and Gloucester Cathedrals - watching them patiently add an indentation to an eye socket or a crease in a poised finger - only to be told that the sculptures would ultimately sit beyond the gaze of the public.
It wasn’t long before I realised that my modern world view was getting in the way of understanding the nature of why and how these places were built. Cathedrals were not being built merely as monuments - they were being treated as sentient vessels, capable of carrying memory, identity and belief forward through time.
Generation after generation invested labour, skill and imagination into the building itself - from the hidden cusping on a lofty spire to the carved corbels within the shadowy eaves. Layer upon layer of human experience absorbed into the fabric of place.
Perhaps that is what many of our great churches and cathedrals really are - analogue databanks. Unlike the digital databanks of today, they do not store information in code, but in stone, timber, paint, ritual, story and song; and, of course, glass. The St. William glass, vast as it is, is just one element within a larger ecology of memory, through which successive generations continue to speak to one another.
Over time, through inking in faces and painting details from the glass, I had an odd sense of belonging rather than observing - as if the remarkable range of visual cues held within the glass - a kind of code hidden in plain sight - was orchestrating my response. I felt as though, through the medium of art, I was able to plug into this remarkable architectural repository latent with memory.
Subsequently, I felt an increasing desire to draw the world of St. William down into the present as well as the ordinary men and women who populate the glass and whose lives are captured in fleeting gestures and expressions.
And so, within the artwork, some of these figures begin to escape the confines of their leaded cames. They tumble into the present day - an acknowledgement of how places like this hold simultaneous histories, and by their very nature, shape the way we see, think and belong. In that sense, the finished piece became more than a record of St. William - it became a conduit for tapping into the Minster-memory-bank and pricked the veil between past and present.
Time itself is folded into the work. The orphaned Victorian Bible covers carry one history. The unfolding concertina pages carry another. The medieval narratives held within the glass are drawn into the present through paint, ink and observation. Each generation receives something, adds something and passes something on. And in that sense, I feel so privileged to be one more participant in this window's dynamic and evolving story.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold has suggested that we do not really inhabit a world of objects. We inhabit a world of lines: paths, journeys, threads and stories all woven together.
York Minster is one such world in a galaxy of material treasures - repositories of memory where successive generations continue to converse across time.
This little book is my small contribution to that long conversation - holding, however briefly, the past, the present and the possibility of the future within a single unfolding line.
The Saint William Window
The St. William Window does not stand alone. It forms part of a remarkable medieval triptych with the St. Cuthbert Window opposite and the vast Great East Window beyond.
Together they create a landscape of light in which sunlight is filtered through layers of story, memory and devotion. As the day unfolds, the light that falls into the Minster has already passed through centuries of human experience - through saints and pilgrims, artists and patrons, hopes and anxieties - before finally arriving and defining the liturgical heart of the Minster.
Thanks to modern technology - many of the stained glass windows at York can now be seen from the York Minster Stained Glass Navigator.
St. William of York: Life and Legacy
This is a remarkable exhibition in the cathedral's Treasury - full of medieval artefacts relating to the life of St. William. The exhibition is adjacent to St. William's tomb, which is housed within a Roman sarcophagus.
More here about the exhibition:
Own an original part of my York Minster Art Work
I’m offering the next two people to sign up as Parlour Tier members the opportunity to own an original piece of the St. William of York project.
The first member to sign up will receive the concertina sketchbook used to develop and prove the concept for the final artwork.
The second member to sign up will receive the pocket field sketchbook that travelled with me around York - filled with sketches, colours, notes and observations gathered on location during the making of the piece.
You can see the books at the beginning of the film in this digest.
Both books have blank pages - perhaps for you to add your own art.
I can't recommend this book enough. If you want to dive deeper into the art of stained glass - its conservation and its meaning - this is the book for you. Available also in paperback from York Minster. Every single panel has been photographed and is listed in the catalogue at the back of the book.
Go to York Minster to experience the window in all its glory:
Also visit this wonderful display at York Museum:
Mark Brown
This is Adam's website (who made the art book)
"For me, this is a moment of sanctuary: the ragged, ruddy fox against the monolithic west front. I can’t help but wonder how many generations of foxes have graced the curlicue and the curvilinear with their quatrefoil pads."
Read on:
Andy Marshall
"For a moment, the world stopped feeling closed to me. The contract with the present felt renewed. And I found myself thinking - with unusual clarity - that I will never give up on this world while places like this, and the people capable of making them, still exist within it."
Read on:
Andy Marshall
"The service is coming to an end. I can tell by the rhythm and the tone of the minister’s voice rather than the words. I look at the strangers sat around me and ask myself, ‘where do I fit in with all of this?’"
Read on:
Andy Marshall
"And having spent so much time absorbed in the optics of photography, it was on my journey to Carlisle, in my encounter with the window there, that I realised how singular this medium is to our isles..."
Read on:
Andy Marshall
For Members (From the Archives) - York Minster during Holy Week
Behind the scenes and hour by hour account of my day of photography
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Kind words from a subscriber:
Andy your work is becoming wonderful, remarkable. A so-called breakdown has been milled into its constituent parts, becoming profound construction: through perception, architecture, the lens and the pen. In your Repton crypt essay a deep description of our social anxiety - and our reason to be....
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
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