Ever wonder how you would paint 32 square feet of stretched canvas? How does an artist compose, winnow, and massage such a creative endeavor? Many think it's like reading a book, starting from the left cover and finishing at the right.

From my earliest memories that's what I did. I would draw beginning on the left side of the paper, telling the story as I drifted to the right. Then one fine day my mother presented me with her artist's palette and My Buddy fishing tackle box with tubes of oil pigment and brushes she had used in her painting lessons in the Murray (Utah) 10 th Ward Relief Society. I still use them today to honor her.

Excitedly I contemplated my first oil painting. What is a 15-year-old boy interested in painting? How about birds? How about 50 life-size birds that covered 50 square feet and took two years to paint!

Click to Enlarge

Instead of starting on the left side, I began on the right and painted progressively to the left on five panels of plywood that I covered with mastic and old sheets off my bed. These panels traveled from room to room in my home during the two years I worked on them and Mom would say, “Steve, come get your bird boards off the table so I can make dinner.”

Forty years later, that busy painting has a place of honor — in our garage next to the rabbit cage. It is an interesting study in evolution of technique because the painting was finished one panel at a time. It almost looks like five different people had painted it. Any serious art student knows that is not the way to compose and paint a picture, but it is typical of the energy necessary to create any significant work.

Another Large Concept

The gospel of Jesus Christ is simple in concept yet profound in its power. I was converted to Jesus in my teen years by the Book of Mormon — a rather complex book. This book fits me. It is who I am. To say simply that I love the Book of Mormon is the equivalent of painting a miniature or sculpting a thumb-size statue — it's not enough. For me it has to be grand panoramas and large sculptures to adequately express my passion for the Book of Mormon and praise to God.

Today I would like to present to Meridian Magazine readers the 32-square-foot canvas I did more than a decade ago — “Escape to Zarahemla.” The reader may be familiar with the painting from the Second International Competition at the Museum of Church History and Art. It has also appeared in Church magazines and the Covenant edition of the family Book of Mormon.

“Escape” is the second in a series of very personal paintings linked to our family's heritage as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believers in the Book of Mormon. While the first three of our eventual six daughters were still quite young, I wanted to pass on to them a significant statement of my testimony of The Book of Mormon, something they and their children would treasure as an heirloom.

The prophet Nephi tells us that for our profit and learning we should “liken all scripture unto us” (2 Nephi 19:23). The idea to compose grand paintings with each daughter featured in a story from the Book of Mormon was exactly the inspired answer! Thus “Escape to Zarahemla” became a very personalized lesson for my second daughter Holly to liken the scripture story in chapter 22 of Mosiah to herself. It also fulfilled my personal requirement to always strive for a scriptural depiction that a family might hang on the walls of their home.

Beginning in Mosiah 7, we read of Zeniff, who was anxious to re-inherit the original land of his forefathers and who was the grandfather of King Limhi (who is featured in the painting). The Lamanites now populated the land and their ruler, King Laman, devised a cunning plan to invite Zeniff and his people to Lehi-Nephi to ultimately make them slaves.

Even though his people were attacked on numerous occasions by the Lamanites, Zeniff believed in the strength of the Lord. He was a faithful servant of God till the end of his life, but his son Noah had no such religious faith. Instead Noah spent his strength in riotous living with his wives and concubines and became an alcoholic. His subjects followed his lead, causing King Mosiah to later disparage the necessity of having a king, pointing out the evil and destruction that can befall a people because of the wickedness of their ruler (Mosiah 29:17).

By the time Noah's son Limhi assumed the kingdom, all was lost. As Laman had originally planned, the people of Limhi were at last slaves, whipped and driven as beasts of burden. Three times Limhi went against the Lamanites, all three wars were unmitigated disasters.

Then in a single verse, the hopeless misery of Limhi's people turns into a bright hope of deliverance when a captured prisoner turns out to be Ammon, a descendent of Zarahemla, sent by King Mosiah to find out what happened to Zeniff's long-lost people. King Limhi was so struck by the mercies of the Lord in the prospect of deliverance by Ammon and his search party that he and many of his people entered into a covenant to serve God and keep his commandments.

And so, the scene at hand becomes the painting “Escape to Zarahemla.”

Click to Enlarge

The most difficult thing to explain to others in the process of creating a painting is the initial internal

Image — literally bursting forth in an instant. Most of the form for my paintings comes in a wordless flash. The good flashes are the ones I build upon. I strongly believe the Holy Spirit helps me in the purest of my inspirations and often comes during spiritual times in the temple or quiet reflection at night. I haven't yet run out of material to be created. In fact, there's quite a backlog. Most of the work in any painting is the interminable details and nuance of slight changes as the painting unfolds.

The details begin with Gideon, a valuable servant of the King, seen here opening the heavy wooden gate in the background.

He persuaded the King that in the night, they could take their women, children and tents and drive their flocks and herds through “the back pass, through the back wall, on the back side of the city” (Mosiah 22:6) where the Lamanite guards were usually drunk. He would give them even more reason to be asleep with a “last tribute” of wine.

The idea to paint a nightscape with the moon and clouds prominently displayed lends a tranquil feeling to an otherwise tense scene and was the first consideration in aesthetically composing the painting. I like to combine landscape into a scriptural painting which, as you will see, helps tell the story and lend appeal to the result.

The moon is the direct counterpart of King Limhi in the composition and is the lead focus in a hidden scene we will talk about later. The reason I showed some of the ocean is to signify that this land was the original area where Lehi landed, although it was unlikely visible from Shilom. However, I was so smitten by the shadows the clouds made in the moonlight on the ocean's shimmering surface one peaceful night in Cabo San Lucas, that I made an effort to recreate it here.

Click to Enlarge

I grew up with Arnold Friberg's images of the Book of Mormon in my head, and when I thought of “flocks and herds” I would picture Ammon guarding the king's flocks of wild sheep resembling the argali of Asia. I pictured a young girl, played by my daughter Holly, preparing to leave with her favorite pets from the family herd, urging them to “hush” as they were about to slip past the sleeping guards. So I took Holly to a local farm where I had her pose with goats for a study for the painting and then added some adoring lambs into the composition.

This was also about the time that John Sorensen published his book, A Geographic Setting for the Book of Mormon . Too bad I didn't read it sooner. As far as we know, no Old World sheep and goats existed in the New World before Europeans brought them. Alas. I sinned and had to repaint!

So exactly what did the Nephites raise for food and raiment? Judging from Mesoamerican culinary history, turkeys were common flocks. That wasn't a cuddly option. It is also plausible that brocket deer were raised as herds, as well as alpacas and its slighter cousin, the vicuña. I spent another week redoing the goats and sheep into vicuñas and brocket deer.

Click to Enlarge

Mosiah 22:12 states the Nephites took “all their gold, silver, and their precious things” and their provisions with them and pursued their journey. What provisions did the Nephites eat? It was a variation of a Mesoamerican diet consisting of beans, squash, maize, peppers, and available fruit.

Click to Enlarge

The gold and silver are precious examples found in various tombs in Mesoamerica. Their treasures certainly included the 24 gold plates of Ether.

Click to Enlarge

When Gideon suggested his escape plan to the King, he specifically refers to women and children rather than men and/or families. King Limhi's warriors and men were decimated by their repeated unsuccessful battles with the Lamanites. Two of the matrons pictured escaping are played by my mother-in-law, Norma (left), and my own mother, Donna (right). Though Norma posed for the painting, she never saw herself finished because she died from cancer. I painted my own mother doing what she did countless times to a rowdy son growing up, as I often needed to be reminded to be still.

Click to Enlarge

The warrior Ammon sent by King Mosiah to find Zeniff's people was played by my oldest brother, Richard, who likewise posed for the painting, but died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart disorder. He too didn't see the finished painting. As a warrior, Ammon is arrayed in jaguar skins as a symbol of power. Representative of Mesoamerican swords, he carries one made of hardwood with razor-sharp obsidian teeth embedded into both edges. One of Cortez' men recorded that during a battle with Montezuma's army, he witnessed a horse beheaded with a single blow with such a sword.

Click to Enlarge

King Limhi dressed in symbols of authority — a robe of quetzal feathers, crown, and medallion — is commanding his people to beware. This is a posthumous portrait of my other brother, David, who died 30 years ago while I was on my mission in Japan.