Image caption Niels Meulman imagines medieval monk Eadfrith like a fellow graffiti artist "straight outta Lindisfarne"

Dutch graffiti artist Niels Meulman, also known as Shoe, has been commissioned to paint six pieces inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels as part of an exhibition celebrating the return of the medieval book to north-east England.

But what does graffiti art have to do with a 1,300-year-old copy of the gospels?

On a wet afternoon in Durham a flash of gold illuminates the grey. A 13-metre tall banner painted in shimmering colours is lying on the floor of a vacant shopping centre unit. It is here Niels Meulman has a temporary studio.

The impressive piece, ready to be installed at Newcastle upon Tyne's Castle Keep, is a modern tribute to the incipit of St John's Gospel in principio erat Verbum - "in the beginning was the Word."

What is an illuminated manuscript? A manuscript is a handwritten book

Illuminated manuscripts are decorated with illustrated letters, borders, and independent painted scenes

The Lindisfarne Gospels is regarded as one of the finest examples of an illuminated manuscript Admire Durham's manuscript collection

"That's funny, because in the beginning for me there was a word too, and the word was 'shoe'", says the artist, referring to his graffiti name or tag.

He has been calling himself Shoe since the age of 11, when he drew a picture of a shoe but, as nobody could really make out what it was, he had to add the word next to it to make it more obvious.

The life of a graffiti artist who grew up in 1980s Amsterdam might seem far removed from the world of scribes copying religious texts in medieval England. But Shoe says it is quite the opposite.

"There's a similarity between graffiti writers and scribes in the way they're dedicated to playing around with letters and words. They both see words as images," he explains.

Holding copies of the illuminated pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels, Shoe points at the delicate yet intricate script. The way letters melt into each other, forming words and pictures at the same time.

At first this might seem strange as we are normally taught that images and words are two different things. But when an artist draws or paints a word, it becomes an image, an abstract unit, he says.

Image caption "Some things are universally liked, like things that glow. That's why gold paint was so important in illumination," Shoe says.

Image caption The artist says: "The repeated characters started out as a trial, but also to get the hand flowing. It's not really a letter - basically it's the same stroke."

Image caption Shoe discovered a new technique while painting the banner on the floor and letting the paint drip off the brush. He says it is a "nice reference to the Celtic knot - a little more free, a little more Jackson Pollock."

Image caption "I'm not the best calligrapher around, but I try to make it my own. I'm not a calligrapher, I'm an artist," says Shoe.