Painting Jesus — believing artists talk about the personal impact

With the average American spending only 2.4 minutes per day on religious activities, it’s perhaps inevitable that spiritual realities have come to feel increasingly distant to many. Christian artists today are pushing back on this trend by creating images that remind distracted minds of realities they can’t always see, including and especially the truth of a “Messiah” or “Savior of the world.”

The Deseret News spoke with 15 Latter-day Saint artists to go deeper in appreciating the experience and personal impact of creating rich visual portrayals of Jesus Christ.

Surprising inner turbulence

As soon as she finished the last stroke of her painting, “Atonement,” Kate Lee describes being overcome by negative thoughts, “this is a really bad painting. … You’re a really bad artist. … Don’t tell anyone about it. … You need to hide this.”

Startled, she slid the fresh image under a stack of paintings and kept it there — only later displaying it in the back corner of an art show where people wouldn’t likely see it. Little did she realize how many people would eventually be impacted by that simple image.

Many artists find it challenging to create this type of art. “Painting the Savior is extremely hard for me,” beloved Utah artist Del Parson says, admitting that even after 40 years “it certainly hasn’t gotten easier.”

“A lot of times you fail, but you just make an effort” and ultimately say, “this is the best I can do.” With a smile, he spoke of being slightly worried that in a future day the Savior would tell him in person, “Del, some of these don’t even look like me.”

Josh Clare has painted nature scenes for years, which he has long felt “bear witness of the Creator.” But he avoided direct paintings of Christ for 15 years — “not wanting to fail” and worried he was being presumptuous since he wasn’t a historian. After beginning to paint more images of the Savior this last year, he described how spiritually taxing it can be — “it takes something from me.”

The most “daunting” thing in her career has been “trying to paint the Savior,” says Annie Henrie Nader. “Because he’s everything to us — all of our hopes, our salvation.”

“But he was also a person,” she adds. “Someone approachable, someone people knew — not described as beautiful. He was divine, yet human.”

In creating this art, Nader says, “I can’t overthink it, because if I really was to think of how monumental it all is, it really does defy description and any of my skills.”

“I can’t be good enough and ‘qualified’ for that kind of thing,” Greg Olsen agrees, recalling early days as a painter when he would ask himself, “How do you really do this?” At that point, he felt so intimidated he would exclusively paint baby Jesus or the Lord 200 yards away — avoiding anything more close up.

Some like Eva Koleva Timothy feel better about not showing the Savior’s face. Kate Lee also avoids overly defined faces on characters, in hopes of preserving space for viewers to interpret and “put themselves in the painting.”

Even after 40 years of a celebrated painting career often focused on Jesus Christ, Olsen still sometimes wishes “I could have a vision and do him justice — knowing how long his hair is, etc.” This sense of inadequacy left one day, however, after feeling a distinct message: “Greg, just relax. You love to paint. Just enjoy this process.”

There was no more fear, he says. “Just peace.”

Trying to capture the love

“Painting or sculpting the Savior’s image is one of the most challenging and noble of artistic pursuits,” writes Gary Ernest Smith. “We seriously strive to seek His face.”

It’s the inadvertent distance many believers fall into when they are attempting to be worshipful, Olsen says, that has motivated him to create images of the Savior that portray someone so comfortable that you would come away from an encounter “feeling great about yourself,” even if you had serious worries about your life.

In 1978, Del Parson’s wife and 5-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident. After this tragedy, Parson said, “the Comforter came to me. I’ve never felt God’s love like that before or since.”

That poignant experience has influenced all his paintings since. “Even now,” Parson asks himself, “how can I express the love I felt that day?”

“Most of the time I can’t do it. But I keep trying.” After Parson tried out five sketches of Jesus that were not quite right, he and his wife visited the Eastern Idaho state fair, where she pointed and said, “look at that guy’s eyes.”

The man she spotted agreed to be photographed for what would become the iconic red robe image of Jesus. “I have this great love for the Savior,” Parson said. “I just love him — everything about him.”

“You want to paint that — because of how you feel about him.”

“I’m always looking for someone who has aspects of the Savior,” says Annie Nader — describing once encountering “such a gentle person” that “exuded kindness and confidence” — “someone you’d want to be around.”

This individual felt “humbled” when asked to represent the Savior in a preparatory photograph — with a combination of robes and lighting leading to an “awe-inspiring” moment of everyone asking, “hmm, could this look like him?”

Painting the feeling

“I don’t agonize over the length of his beard,” says charcoal artist Annie Cole. “There’s no real way for me to perfectly portray him, with specific things I know I’m getting wrong.”

It’s a “characteristic, a trait, a feeling, an emotion” she’s really trying to draw, this artist says — explaining, “For me, it’s more important to get the love in his eyes or the comfort of a truth he lived.”

Multiple artists mentioned how easy it can be to “get caught up in whether he would have looked like this or that” — with one telling me, “We can get lost in how he looks, rather than what he did.”

Brent Borup describes focusing more on what the Savior “feels like” than “what he looks like.” For him, these details matter less “as long as I try to get the spirit in there,” including the Savior’s “kindness and acceptance.”

“How would I paint that? How would I visualize it?” Nader often asks after reading a scripture. “Full of mercy,” for instance, “How do you paint mercy?”

Creating conditions for a new experience

When he first converted to Christianity in Korea, Yongsung Kim experienced the Savior as “beautiful, joyful and happy.” But this man would then go into stores and find mostly classical images of a Christ in agony — seeming to focus primarily on trauma, blood, guilt and sadness. Although referencing historical truth, these depictions didn’t align with his own personal experience of the living Christ.

Kim set out to paint something that matched his individual feelings and experiences — ultimately creating images with “so much color, and Christ always smiling.” He says with a smile, “Even the sheep have a smiling face.”

As reflected in his striking painting “Rescue Me,” this Protestant artist hopes his paintings will “give people comfort and cure some of their pain and agonies” — becoming another “pathway” for viewers to come closer to Jesus Christ.

‘That could be me’

Kate Lee hopes her seemingly simple paintings help create “just a moment with their Savior” — one different than perhaps words alone can provide.

“I can see myself in this painting,” she says about images like “Peace in Christ” or “Through His Light” — hoping that others say, “That is me. … I have felt that. … I’m going through that. … I want to feel that.”

“Just to be physically carried by the Savior,” she says. “I want that — to be wrapped up in his arms and carried on days that are heavy.”

“The connection to Christ is more sought out than an image of Christ on his own,” says Dallan Wright, Fine Art Category Manager at Deseret Book, based on his review of painting numbers. As they “see themselves in an image” he adds, viewers “hope for similar connections with Christ in their own lives.”

“People want images that help them interact,” Brent Borup says — compared with only depictions from history. They also value art that helps visualize “who they themselves imagine them to be.”

He tells a story of a 20-year-old coming up to a display of his painting of a small child playing with the Savior’s hands (“His Hands”), and saying, “That little girl is me, I want to buy it.”

“That could be me,” Rose Datoc Dall also says about her depiction of the rich young man (“What Lack I Yet?”). “He hasn’t made the choice yet.”

Those who connect with a painting usually “see themselves in it,” she says. “He knows us. And he knows when we’re reaching out — even if it’s feeble. He knows when we’re making an effort.”

Even artists who depict historical scenes often express hopes that viewers will find a more personal meaning. About his image of resurrection morning, “My Redeemer Lives,” Roger Loveless writes about not only “the extraordinary moments of that morning as seen through the eyes of one person” but also what “will someday be experienced by all.”

And regarding her painting showing sleeping apostles and a suffering Christ, Crystal Close describes the scene as “symbolic of each of us as we slumber, so to speak, incapable of fully understanding the great sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Visualizing the comfort

Annie Nader remembers when “life wasn’t moving in a direction I wanted” as a single adult. “The loneliness was intense.”

In 2011, she came to feel a renewed awareness that the Lord knew her personally after a talk by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

From that experience, Nader wanted to visualize the Lord “having that time for us individually — where there’s nothing else going on. There’s no other distractions, we’re not part of a crowd. He’s not healing a crowd.” Instead, the Savior is focused on “a single individual” and “he has time for me, a lot of time.”

Annie Cole refused to draw Christ for many years, thinking, “I can’t do him justice.” But after an especially lonely time as a young mother of three when she “fell into a dark place,” she decided, “I needed a picture of Christ that could bring me comfort.”

“So I drew him and hung it on my wall, and never meant to share it.”

By portraying “Christ kissing the top of your head,” Cole says she was trying to capture the intimate and “very loving way of comfort” like “someone who really cares for you and is close to you would do — something I would do to my daughter to comfort her if she was hurt.”

In an accompanying image of a young man, head in his hands and upset, Christ is looking at the man in despair, who is oblivious to who’s actually looking on. “He’s too overcome with his pain,” she says. “But Christ is right there with him.”

“My experience” in coming to know the Savior, Chad Winks says, “wasn’t the happy smiling butterfly. It was the one where he suffered and carried my sorrows so I didn’t have to anymore. And I was done.”

This awareness is reflected in his works like “In Agony He Prayed” and “The One.” His portrayal of the Savior’s light piercing the grove in Palmyra, New York, speaks to the way darkness was “chased away” in his own life after escaping drug addiction and suicidal thoughts before returning to church.

Time alone with the Savior

Esther Hi’ilani Candari says the experience of painting the Savior has “definitely deepened” her relationship with Him and “absolutely made it more personal.”

“It’s almost impossible not to have that experience when you’re literally spending hundreds of hours over the course of your career staring at Jesus.”

“The emotional experience of looking Jesus in the eyes for hours on end is very intimate,” Candari describes, while admitting: “I won’t say it’s always comfortable, either — because even though I’m creating this image, I feel Jesus looking at me, and think, ‘What is he seeing?’”

“Each day as I came into the studio while working on ‘Seeking the One,’” Liz Lemon Swindle has written, “I had an overwhelming feeling that He was looking at me.”

“When I mess up, and chase the spirit away, I can’t create,” says Eva Koleva Timothy — expressing gratitude for emphasis in the Church of Jesus Christ on the “joy of daily repentance.”

“When I hold a grudge towards someone, I just feel like I need to resolve it, because I can’t create no matter how much I try.” She added, “as creators, we are co-creators with God — it’s really Him in us. I’m grateful I can start over and keep going.”

“I find I cannot paint the Savior unless I’m trying my best to keep the commandments,” agrees Parson, discussing how painting has helped him throughout his life to “stay focused on Christ.”

“It’s been a necessity. If I try to paint the Savior and I’m not trying to do the right thing, I can’t do it. That’s been a blessing.”

The blessing of painting Christ

Creating this kind of art clearly isn’t only about being stretched. “If you paint the Savior, he’s more real to me than if he’s just in my mind,” Parson continues — describing all of sacred art as “a search for what’s real.”

“I’m communicating with my Savior when I paint,” Lee says — “solidifying my relationship with him more.” She describes how often she “walks away so much lighter and happier” after creating art about Jesus, having “spent time with the Savior.”

“The amount of time spent thinking of him feels like a form of worship,” says Nader, reflecting on the many hours involved fixated on a portrait of the Savior in the works. “In a sense, it’s a more in-depth study.”

When an image is done, Nader also suggests it’s kind of a “form of worship to surround yourself with images of the Savior.” After you “make a painting, and put it up on the wall,” she says. “It almost has a presence in your life and home.”

“When I started to paint pictures of Jesus,” Borup says, “I didn’t realize the impact that it would make in every aspect of my life.”

In addition to reinforcing the Messiah’s reality, he says, this kind of art has influenced him to “be more Christ-like without even trying.”

“When you focus on him, a better life is a byproduct. It just automatically happens,” Borup says. “When you focus just a little bit more on Jesus Christ, you will see a difference in your life.”

For more from these artist interviews, check out this accompanying essay exploring more of what it’s like to create these images: “Believing painters describe sacred art as a stillness practice.”