Oversaved

This is one of the famous  alleged  photographs of Joseph Smith.   Personally ,  I  find the guy ordinary and not charismatic nor handsome enough.  Unlike  the other paintings,  I  decided to keep his hair blonde.  I tried to make it black, but the original color won me over. I staged the baby Joseph Smiths like in a movie poster.  Movie posters in general consist of floating people staring off in different directions.  One away from the  main  character, some towards.  I  kind of  like that artificiality. While the other paintings were inspired by spiritualist automatic writing.  I was  going  for a more graphic design look this time.  I was drawn by the posters of 1960s movies like The Man with the Golden Arm. I loved the storytelling and  streetwise  feel of the fonts. Main figure painted in Main figure painted in, small figures painted in, half of ba...

I started off using the most obvious photos of Joseph Smith. During the progress of the series. I liked the photos of Joseph Smith that look nothing like him. This is the first like photo that I have painted. Joseph Smith is an enigmatic figure. I think people like to add on to history. Maybe Joseph Smith looked altogether different? We have the death mask of Joseph Smith. We know what he looked like. Most of those alleged photos look nothing like that. I saw this photo online and was really enchanted by it. He looks like an old schoolmaster. I noticed that all my Joseph Smith paintings before had him in the center of the painting. I decided I wanted to have a picture of Joseph Smith pushed aside  On the right the figures are in an active role as assistants in dunking the main figure. Like all the figures before he is dunked over head with water. This time I used a gothic or scary heavy metal type of font with the "Holiness to the Lo...