Heading north to Saint Anselm College is a family tradition: grads include one uncle; sister Amy ’82; a niece and nephew; five first cousins; and a number of cousins more distant. After graduating with an English degree in 1978, Fr. Iain spent three years as a social worker at St. John’s Hospital in Lowell, Mass., where he had worked summers as a janitor. Then Fr. Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B., a friend and mentor, invited him to the monastery for the Feast of St. Benedict.

“That was a changing year for me,” Fr. Iain says. “I felt very full and I was ready to give back. I remember being very inspired on that visit by the art and beauty of the  Benedictine liturgy. Five days later, I was completely turned around.”

He was ordained at Saint Anselm Abbey in 1987, and worked in the college’s admission office for six years before deciding to pursue an MFA. “Saint Anselm always encouraged me; they gave me marvelous guidance,” Fr. Iain says. “I made a proposal for what I wanted to do, but they had to wonder: ‘Is he any good?’”

He was. He received his MFA from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art, and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, the Art Students League of New York, and in Florence, Italy, through London’s Richmond College. His work is frequently selected for exhibitions, including the recent Juried Members Exhibition of the Art Students League of New York. His paintings and drawings are included in the Chapel Art Center’s biennial Faculty Exhibit, and every year, they grace the front of Fr. Jonathan’s Christmas card and the Abbey Christmas card.

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