He created fresco cycles for rural Orthodox churches under commission from ordinary members of the local peasant communities, who acted as collective patrons.

While he could be considered a forerunner to the Cretan School, which saw success in producing hybrid-style icons for an international clientele, his work was more traditional in character and only incorporated Western influences in secondary details, as it catered to regional tastes.

[4] His frescos survive in four districts of the Chania prefecture, with the majority in the mountainous province of Selino, which displays the highest density of church painting in Crete.

[citation needed] By 1337/8 Pagomenos was working together with his son Nikolaos within the framework of a small family workshop of painters, other examples of which are known from contemporary Crete and the Aegean.

[9] The early fourteenth-century Cretan painters Theodoros Daniil and his nephew Michail Veneris, also active in western Crete, might have exerted a formative influence on Pagomenos before he developed his own distinctive style.