SANDRA RAST
It took close to a year of on-and-off work for LDS painter Sandra Rast to complete Ruth, but the end result was worth the wait.
About the stunning painting, Rast says, “I put the beauty and softness in her eyes to represent the beauty of her inner attributes, that she’s good and gracious with dignity and charity on the inside. You have to paint the outside to show she internally had those characteristics we all seek.”
Other symbols found in the painting include the light around Ruth’s head, which represents revelation, knowledge, and truth. The heavy use of gold in the background and the color of the wheat symbolize things that are pure and precious, as well as the celestial kingdom, our ultimate goal. Ruth’s hands are a focal point of the piece, showing her strength and representing providence and blessings, especially those that come through work.
“People tell me I’m an ‘emotional painter,’” Rast confesses. “I love it. I want to be the emotional painter. I want my paintings to bring out the emotions within us that will teach us.” She explains, “If we look underneath the stories, we realize there are feelings and emotions that can influence our own lives.”
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MIKE CALL
Originally created as a gift for the parents of the sculptor’s assistant, Eternal Companions was made to show the special relationship senior missionaries have with each other and with the Lord.
Mike Call, the artist behind the work, explains: “I wanted to capture a couple walking side by side, hands clasped affectionately, leaning on and supporting each other. I envisioned them anxiously engaged in missionary service, possibly heading off to a teaching appointment. I wanted to capture the joy both of service and of the special relationship between a committed husband and wife—eternal companions.”
As Call worked to carefully craft Eternal Companions, he says, “I thought about my parents, who are serving a part-time mission, and my grandparents, and great-grandparents, many of whom served as couple missionaries. I began to think about what was different from my mission as a 19-year-old and their missions. It became clear that this was a special service that they could render together with the companion of their choice, the person that they shared sacred covenants with and had spent the majority of their lives with, raising a family and serving faithfully in the Church. It became clear to me that what was really at the heart of this sculpture was that special relationship, the dedication to each other and to the Lord.”
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LIZ LEMON SWINDLE
LDS painter Liz Lemon Swindle has become a beloved household name among Mormons, and her inspiring LDS artwork hangs in homes around the world. Her newest painting, Follow Me, captures the meaning behind Christ’s call for us to follow Him.
Inspired by Christ’s words to “come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” Swindle took on the task of painting the essence of faith: to follow Christ without actually seeing Him.
“So few of us will ever get to see the Savior’s face in life, so I chose to paint only His feet,” says Swindle, reminding us of the need for faith to believe in what we cannot see. You don’t have to see Him to know Him.”
According to Swindle, the biggest challenge of this piece was getting the water just right. “Water can be tedious, even in the most inspiring paintings. I learned early on that there really aren’t any shortcuts. Just like in life, there are things we must hunker down and do. When the Savior asks us to follow Him, He doesn’t promise us a smooth path; to do so would deny us the opportunities we must have if we are going to learn faith.”
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SIMON DEWEY
“An invitation to salvation” is how artist Simon Dewey describes his newest sculpture, Lead, Kindly Light. While he loves his painting of the same name, which inspired his new sculpture, he explains that there is only so much an artist can control in two dimensions: “The canvas can only contain so much. With three dimensions, one is unconsciously encouraged to move around the art and allow the gaze to rest on any angle from any vantage point.” So he commissioned a third party, under his careful direction, to translate his painting into a beautiful bronze statue.
Dewey loves the metaphor of light—its beauty and meaning to those of us struggling through life. His sculpture captures the Savior lighting the way with one hand and beckoning to us to come to Him with the other.
As Dewey continues to create images of the Savior, he wants observers to find something beyond the medium. “Religious art has the illustrious tradition of being able to inspire, console, motivate, and educate,” he explains. He loves that some people describe his artwork as a “visual utterance to our testimonies,” but he humbly recognizes his talent as a gift, a way to share his own feelings about the gospel.
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ANNIE HENRIE
Angels are often a part of Annie Henrie’s paintings, and Mother’s Lullaby is no different. The painting portrays a baby being watched over by a loving mother, who is also being watched over.
Henrie says angels like these are representations of love. They remind her of the people in her own life—her mother, friends, and family—who have been angels to her.
However, angels aren’t the only symbolism found in this beautiful painting. An observer might notice some slim yellow halos around the heads of the angels, influenced by Renaissance art. Henrie explains that the halos were a way of setting a painting apart as holy and the people with halos as holy people. But Henrie goes on, “They’re kind of incomplete, especially with the mom. Her halo isn’t really complete, but it’s there. She’s not perfect yet, but she’s still a divine person. She’s getting there.”
The title, Mother’s Lullaby, brings the entire piece together with a special corresponding motif within the painting: “If you look at it closely, it has sheets of music woven throughout the painting. I think a mom singing a lullaby is the perfect moment of feeling watched over. Feeling the closeness and tenderness and love, I feel like the word lullaby invokes all of those.
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COURTNEY VANDER VEUR
The idea for Courtney Vander Veur’s Day One came while she was experimenting painting with a combination of oil paint and turpentine. As she dripped water on the mixture, she noticed it would move around on the canvas and leave lots of circles and paths. “I started to feel like the paintings felt slightly cosmic, like planets or cells dividing,” Vander Veur explains. Seeing some paintings of the creation in the Church museum a short while later confirmed what she wanted to do with her experiment.
The process of creation is important in every aspect of Vander Veur’s painting. Day One took weeks to complete as she waited for layers of color, starting with yellow, to dry before adding others, creating darker parts on the canvas simply by adding more layers. “The thing that I love about it is that it was actually a spiritual experience creating it, because I felt like it kind of created itself as well,” Vander Veur recalls. Often when she would try to control where the paint went, it wouldn’t stay. “So I ended up getting a lot of marks on the painting that I think are really beautiful that I couldn’t have done if I wanted to.”
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GREG OLSEN
We all know the feeling of vastness and humility that comes from gazing at the stars and the immensity of God's creations. That's exactly the feeling Greg Olsen has created with his latest piece, "World's Without End." Check out what the author has to say in this moving video.
To see an incredible time-lapse of Greg Olsen painting the nativity, click here. For more about how Greg Olsen receives his inspiration, click here.
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