The Smiling Christ

11×14 inches, oil on gessobord, 2026
Contact me to purchase the painting.

In my spare time, I’m creating a series of paintings of Jesus that reflect His personality. My goal is to help us relate to Him better. I am convinced that we need to de-mythologize Him at least sometimes, to strip away the imagined halo, the emaciated, pale skin and the distancing formal language we address Him with to focus on Him more as a brother and friend, someone who was once very mortal and walked for hours each day in a dry, sunbaked environment, someone who knows and loves us personally and can relate to us, male and female, in very practical and everyday ways, loving us and offering helps despite any of our perceived failings.

To my mind, a person like that would often and easily share a personal, loving smile. I have been impressed with how many people have responded to this image, saying that they don’t often see pictures of Christ smiling. Well, here’s one. And yes, His gaze is intentionally focused directly on you.

This is not an attempt to drag Him down to our level but to see Him as someone we can invite into our home any time to sit next to us, listening with infinite empathy to our anything we want to talk about.

Focusing on His exalted status can intimidate us as we wrestle with our sins and feelings of self-worth but still, He is our Savior and God. We need to respect and rely upon that.

Here is a video created from my painting by my talented artist and animator friend Vinny DiGirolamo:

Process

I painted this over two days, a few hours each day. Yes, there is a debate about His eye color. People from the Middle East generally have brown eyes, but I decided to go with the unverified story of David O. McKay stating that Christ’s eyes are blue. Besides, they really stand out, don’t they?

Christ was only about 30 years old in this image, with people of that era living at most to about 60, so His hair wouldn’t be turning grey. But the light in my reference photo reflects the effects of the Sun at midday, so I decided to go with it.