Julia Bridget Hayes was born in South Africa and lives in Athens, Greece. She studied Theology at the Social Theology Faculty of the University of Athens on a scholarship. In 2007 she completed her Masters degree on the subject of "Baptism in the Catechisms of St Cyril of Jerusalem".

From a young age she would draw and paint and was particularly interested in the human figure and its movement. This interest found its full expression in Byzantine iconography. Julia was self-taught for many years and in 2008 started taking classes with master iconographer George Kordis both at the Theology Faculty of the University of Athens and at the Eikonourgia School of Iconography.

Julia strives to make each icon she paints a unique expression of the of the Church’s tradition by capturing the movement and presence of the depicted in light, line and colour. She achieves chromatic harmony by mainly using a limited tetrachrome pallete. In the words of iconographer Aidan Hart, her work captures “the appreciation of form found in Byzantine works with the translucency and painterliness that the Russians have perfected.”

Her hand-painted icons are in churches and private collections in Greece, South Africa, Russia, UK, Ukraine, Finland, Belgium, Romania, Czech Republic, Australia, USA, Indonesia and Argentina and have also been published in the Eastern/ Greek Orthodox Bible (NT) and the collection of Afrikaans poems by Fr Jacobus van der Riet, “Die Onsienlike Son” and the book “Ἅγιος Δημήτριος ὁ Λουμπαρδιάρης”by Charalambos Bousias and Ioannis Pervainas. She has also designed a logo for the Archdiocese of Athens children’s camps.

She also has a passion for photography which she uses mainly to capture life in the Orthodox Church. Some of her photographs have been published in the book “Ἅγιος Δημήτριος ὁ Λουμπαρδιάρης”. She also translates Orthodox books from Greek to English such as "Avvakum the Bearfoot" by Monk Theodoretos the Hagiorite. .