The scriptures speak of stormy seas, mountain top experiences, deep valleys, gardens and roads…

Old Testament scholar and Hebrew professor, Chad Bird, calls this “geographical dogmatics.”

Author and New Testament Scholar, Gary Burge, says “The land and it’s culture, not merely the history that happened there, are an indispensable aspect of the biblical story.”

As a plein air painter I’ve always been drawn to the visible beauty of the landscape but increasingly I’ve also been intrigued by the powerful metaphor of the wilderness too – more specifically – the desert.

The Arabah project is a series of paintings that loosely follow the narrative arc of the exodus story. Using the landscape of the American Southwest as a muse, Arabah will be an exploration of the mystical, metaphorical and breathtaking beauty of desert places in search of the possible blessings it holds out for us. Seasons spent wandering in “the desert” are undoubtedly and, perhaps, necessarily challenging. But I want to share the beauty of the desert with people too.  I hope it will encourage anyone who finds themself in such a place.

My daughter Jamie, an aspiring filmmaker, has joined me on this project which will result in an art exhibit, a coffee table book and a short film.

We're very grateful to New City Arts Ministry for taking an interest in this project and for inviting us to share several sneak previews of the project with people.  We've shown our film trailer at a recent screening event and, coming up on September 14, 2024, we've been invited to exhibit a small sampling of paintings as part of New City's Supercrawl event. You can find more detail here