Digital, 2026
This painting depicts Lehi and Nephi, two brothers in the Book of Mormon, Helaman chapter 5, who felt a call to preach the gospel to their people to help overcome the deep wickedness that had overtaken their land. They taught with great power and authority and were instrumental in converting many of their people to The Lord, even the most wicked among them.
They then journeyed to the lands of their enemies, the Laminates, and preached the same message to them and to the Nephite dissenters who had joined them. Again, they had great success, so much so that the Lamanite leaders felt threatened and sent army to imprison them.
After many days in prison without food, Lamanites came to kill them. To everyone’s astonishment, Lehi and Nephi were encircled by a pillar of heavenly fire, while their enemies were engulfed by a cloud of darkness. Many miracles occurred, and over 300 souls were converted. They left the prison and ministered to their people, bringing the entire Lamanite nation to God.
Process
I researched this story for years, on and off, trying to envision such a complex and moving story, even trying to calculate the kind of prison that would allow 300 people to hear and observe these events. Since the story takes place somewhere in the Americas, I used Aztec and Inca prison systems as my model, making several sketches (below). Eventually I turned to six inch action figures as models and built a stone wall out of clay, posing them against it, using movie prison scenes for the crowd.
While I could have used the reference to paint from, I felt I needed better visuals, so I turned to AI, generating dozens of images and compositing the best in Photoshop. I cropped the result to a ratio of 2:1, granting the result a grand, panoramic sweep.
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