The Dream

First Place in the 2021 Book of Mormon Central Art Contest – Book of Mormon Division.

In Lehi's dream, the prophet wanders aimlessly in a dark and dreary waste with growing anxiety. He prays to God for mercy and immediately the Lord allows him to escape from the darkness. I love that moment of emergence, Lehi's certain relief at deliverance, that curiosity with his new surroundings, and above all his desire to taste of this mysterious fruit which he had never before encountered. I wanted to capture something of that in-between-worlds moment. The moment between sleeping and waking, between dream and reality, between light and dark, between anxiety and relief, between wandering and true conversion.

This individual is an artist and educator who has exhibited work in galleries and museums across the US, Canada, the UK, and continental Europe. He is a Philadelphia native, and he studied art at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has held faculty positions at institutions including Middle Tennessee State University, Southwest Minnesota State University, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Brigham Young University-Idaho. In addition to teaching and exhibiting, he has written and illustrated several children's books including "The Approved Inter-Universal, Pan-Dimensional, Omni-Galactic, Alphabetical Guide to the Cosmos for Beginning Space Explorers." He is also the author of a number of works of non-fiction, including his most recent book, "Not Art." He is married and is the father of six children.