Painting: Oil on Canvas

Painted: 2023

Size: 24” x 30”

Owner: In storage                                                                                                                                                          

Music Selection: “Back to the Garden” by Crowder

Again, this painting is more in line with my folk-art roots. This is a religious icon style of painting. It is a representation of the moment the apostle Paul came face to face with Christ while traveling to Damascus. The goal of his journey was to kill, capture, and persecute Christians. This is the moment that Saul who would later be called Paul came face to face with God. His narrative of the world collapses as he realizes that there is a God Creator. To see God meant certain death in the Hebrew text. Paul is knocked backwards while trying to grasp the full implication of the moment. Suddenly he violently throws himself forward and face down to the ground in worship and fear. In the blink of an eye his world view goes from the possibility there is a God to realization that he had been worshiping a concept rather than his Creator. He changes from Saul to Paul. It is a spiritual rebirth.

I painted this as though it were a stained-glass window in a church.  The knife represents the violence Saul, later to be renamed Paul, was preparing to inflict on a group of people that simply had different religious beliefs. The weapon falls from his hand as the truth is revealed.