Heidi and Mom, from the Lehi's dream painting.
I took up sculpture to make me a better facial plastic surgeon. However, I went into facial plastic surgery because I loved to paint. More than a year before I finished the large painting, Lehi's Dream, my good friend Dr. Stephen Lamb, had me bring the partially finished canvas to his ward in Chula Vista, California for a fireside. He introduced me as “the man who had missed his calling in life.”
Actually, I like to think that I really did find my calling in life. Medicine has been my day job so that I can create the art I want that celebrates the theme of the Restoration, instead of that which a paying patron wants.
In 1983, when I was inspired to create the painting Lehi's Dream , so far as I knew, no one in the Church had yet made a serious attempt to paint the renowned allegory of First Nephi in the Book of Mormon. By the time I finished it four years later — in time for the First Art Competition of The Museum of Church History and Art — it was one of 25 competing renditions of Lehi's vision.
The initial inspiration for the theme and composition of Lehi's Dream came in a flash. The vantage point would be from under the Tree of Life, looking back from where the believers traveled, and across the divide to the great and spacious building.
Entire rendering of Lehi's Dream. Click to Enlarge.
I remember as a general surgery intern rotating through the cardiovascular service, spending hours in the operating room holding retractors and staring at the blank white tile wall visualizing the details. (It was difficult to find the time to paint during surgical residency.) Gradually I realized that in order to perceive the emotions on the faces of the people in the “great and spacious building,” I would have to make the canvas much larger than my previous Book of Mormon paintings. A 4x8-foot panel of masonite seemed about right.
Families are a major part of the vision of the Tree of Life. Chapter eight of First Nephi begins with Lehi exclaiming he has seen a dream, or vision. Immediately he explains the connection to his own family. He rejoiced in Sam and Nephi and their posterity, but feared for Laman and Lemuel, because the former came to the tree to eat of the fruit, the latter refused.
I was amazed to learn that when Joseph Smith was only about five years old, his father Joseph Smith Senior had his own vision of the Tree of Life — which, like father Lehi's dream, revealed something about his own family. He states at the beginning of the dream he was taken by a guide through a barren waste with dead trees. He arrived at a place where he found a “beautiful stream of water,” and a “rope running along the bank of it, about as high as a man could reach.”
It led to a pleasant valley in which stood a tree, “handsome” and “like an umbrella,” which bore a fruit “in shape much like a chestnut bur, and as white as snow, or, if possible, whiter.”
Like Lehi, he invited his family to eat the fruit with him. As he summoned his wife and seven children to eat with him, the angel said he should bring all his children. Joseph Senior said he had. “No” came the answer. “You have two more and must bring them too.”
As he looked, there stood two more little children far off, which he brought to join the rest of the family. During the five years after Joseph Smith Senior had this dream the Smith family had their final two children, Catherine and Don Carlos, for a total of nine children ( History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, Lucy Mack Smith, Pgs. 48-50 ).
One can imagine what Father Smith thought when he read Lehi's account of his dream in the Book of Mormon some 18 years later!
In this same tradition, I viewed my own little family as an integral theme of the vision of the Tree of Life. After all, this painting was created as an heirloom for my oldest daughter Heidi. It was a symbol of the legacy that Heidi's ancestors had passed down to her — echoes of the testimonies of the prophets Lehi and Joseph Smith.
Grown-up Heidi visits her painting 20 years later. Click to Enlarge.
However, Lehi's vision applies to a much broader audience of the world than Lehi's or Joseph Smith's families. The prophet Nephi also saw his father's vision fused with an epic panorama that included many peoples over many centuries. “And the multitude of the earth was gathered together; and I beheld that they were in a large and spacious building, like unto the building my father saw.” (I Nephi 11:35)
Combining those two themes, I decided to put my own little family in a key position as one of the integral pieces of a great multitude of the earth's inhabitants. As the Book of Mormon rolls forth in many languages, different peoples of the earth can rightly see themselves as part of the great latter-day work. They too were seen by the ancient prophets in vision as part of the fulfillment that the Church would fill the whole earth.
In the foreground are represented the three major races of the earth. My wife Susan is holding the precious fruit (symbol of the love of God as personified in Jesus Christ) and sharing it with Heidi.
The artist and his family share the fruit of the tree. Click to Enlarge.
The idea of the fruit the size of a chestnut came from Joseph Smith Senior's account since size is not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Susan is dressed in a period clothing of Joseph Smith's day. I am seen from the back, my hand outstretched as an artist's ploy to draw the eye to the other groups and unify the believers into a cohesive composition.
Jean Agnew (a member in my San Diego ward at the time) and her mother posed for the African races.
Jean Agnew and her mother. Click to Enlarge.
The Asians were represented by my first Japanese mission companion, Shigeru Nakagawa, and his wife Mayumi, of Fukuoka, Japan.
The Nakagawas. Click to Enlarge.
Father Lehi in the left corner was portrayed by my father-in-law, Hal Clark, now deceased.
Hal Clark, “Father Lehi.” Click to Enlarge.
My mother-in-law, Norma Clark, can be seen pulling herself up the hill holding to the iron rod.
Norma Clark, holding to the rod. Click to Enlarge.
Alex Starr, a friend of mine in acting school, posed on the far right in the foreground. He is dropping the half-eaten fruit, suddenly conscious of the jeering laughter from the great and spacious building behind him. “And after they had partaken of the fruit of the tree they did cast their eyes about as if they were ashamed.” (I Nephi 8:25)
The Ashamed Man. Click to Enlarge.
The “G & S” building was designed to literally represent the nations of the earth over the past 5,000 years. I checked out a stack of humanities books from the UCSD library (before the day of the internet!), and endlessly sketched different designs to combine the major architectural styles of the world into one building.
A working sketch of the Great and Spacious Building. Click to Enlarge.
The most fitting entrance into such a building would be the gate of Ishtar, the main gate into Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. Joseph Smith Senior's version of the dream compared the building to Babylon and its ultimate demise.
The Gate of Ishtar. Click to Enlarge.
Enshrined in the main hall of the building is Caesar, the embodiment of all the world has to offer — power, wealth, and prestige.
Detail of Great and Spacious Building. Click to Enlarge.
The Pharaohs of Egypt and a guardian deity from the gate leading to the large temple Todaiji in Nara,Japan, flank the entrance into this great and spacious building.
The temple guardian. Click to Enlarge.
Topping the Renaissance dome is the Greek goddess Hebe, symbol of youth and beauty. Mayan and Aztec walls and Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut's tomb form part of the lower tiered walls, and a Japanese garden the base. The encircling walls were inspired by the Parthenon and the Roman Coliseum.
The varying architectural styles of the Great and Spacious Building. Click to Enlarge.
Orthodox Russian onion domes, Indian mogul palace facades, Kampuchean gables, European gothic and baroque carving, Chinese stupa-pagodas, and of course the steel and glass superstructures of our own day are blended into this fantastic fabrication. Those of you readers who live in Los Angeles may notice the influence of the Hotel Bonaventure.
Lehi described the building “filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.” (I Nephi 8:27)
I depicted these people in their ethnic dress from every era of every nation. I'm afraid one will have to look at the original painting hanging in the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City to make out the emotions on their tiny faces. (I used a brush with one bristle, I think.) I don't have any photos that adequately show that. But they are dancing, eating, laughing, and pointing their fingers, jeering at the believers under the Tree of Life.
The people were mocking. Click to Enlarge.
This great building “stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.” (I Nephi 8:26) The viewer will notice there is no visible foundation for this building, only the mists in the bottom of the “great gulf” and a river of water that grows dirtier as it flows.
The river of filthy water. Click to Enlarge.
Laman and Lemuel asked Nephi, “What meaneth the river of water which our father saw?“
