Introduction

Margaret Young: Well, I always enjoy personal introductions, so I’m going to have J. Kirk Richards be introduced by Cynthia Vance Richards, who knows him rather well.

Cynthia Richards: Any of you know our family, you know I raised a family of musicians. Kirk was a part of the French horn trio at our house who enjoyed participating in the ward’s Fourth of July band and also a few glorious Christmas Eves at the marble-halled Utah County building where the trio serenaded the few people who would come there to transact business on Christmas Eve. Can you imagine anyone going to the county building to do anything? As long as virtually no one was there, why not enjoy the reverb that three French horns could produce? We sometimes combined the horn players with the string players in the family to create a musical event not often heard.

Kirk grew proficient on the horn. Then at the age of fourteen, he soloed with the Utah Valley Symphony at their Young Artist Concert, playing a Mozart horn concerto. I should have suspected that there was a change in the air when I saw him sketching from his imagination a very detailed and intricate dragon before he went on stage to perform. Actually, the first time I had any idea that he had artistic talent was when he was in junior high and he was required to write a children’s story and illustrate it. I noticed there was a lot of control there in the art.

I’m really, really glad that I let go of the horn idea, though I know that the time he spent in music was certainly not wasted. I feel it continues to inform what he does, and besides, we shared some great musical moments. There’s nothing quite like starting your day playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Johann Sebastian Bach together.

Margaret Young: Cynthia asked me to do all of what he’s done, but I can’t imagine a better introduction than that, so you can look him up on Wikipedia.

J. Kirk Richards: Well, thanks, Mom. She said that I gave her a sincere request to switch from music to art—that was a euphemism for a “tantrum.”

All right, this is a picture of lots of grains of salt in my hand to remind you to take everything that I say today with lots of grains of salt.

Should we attempt it?

So, one of the first things an artist thinks about when depicting the Savior is, “Should we attempt it?” And, you know, a lot of religions, a lot of art students, a lot of Mormon art students, I think, are affected by this scripture here from the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

You can probably guess that I have reconciled myself with this scripture. But, just so you know, there are a lot of religions, a lot of young Mormon artists who won’t paint the Savior because of this scripture. I’ve heard discussions among themselves as to whether or not it should be done. “Since we don’t know what he looks like, what’s the use?” I’ve heard a lot of these kinds of comments.

Some of the scriptures that I fall back to—there’s this one in Psalms: “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” And then, of course, the Article of Faith number thirteen: “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

I don’t think I need to convince anyone here that art is often something that’s praiseworthy, and the best images of Christ are certainly virtuous, lovely, and of good report—and those are the kinds of things that we seek after. And this is quoting the admonition of Paul.

The admonition of Paul in the New Testament says “to think upon these things.” I really love that as Latter-day Saints, we seek after these things. No other group of Christians has this verbiage in the admonition of Paul—to actively go after these things.

Spencer W. Kimball in his “Gospel Vision of the Arts”: “During one of our visits to Copenhagen, we were excited and inspired as we drank in the beauty of Thorvaldsen’s Christ and the Twelve Apostles. We wondered if anyone, anytime, could produce a greater masterpiece, and yet time may surprise the world. Can you see statues of the Lord, his prophets, and his disciples?”

And, if you haven’t read this talk, it’s worth reading. You’ll see that he clearly advocates images of the Savior and of scripture across the board.

Should I attempt it?

The next thing artists often ask themselves is, “Should I attempt it?”

Artists are often discouraged. As a young college student, I feel like I was discouraged from painting Christ by faculty and by my colleagues. It may not have been overt as much as reactions and comments. I think that there’s such a worry about doing it poorly that it’s just generally discouraged.

Doctrine & Covenants 4:3. “Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.” And, Esther, of course is told, “…who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

I put this scripture because I remember vividly watching Conference, and there was a talk being given. An image of Christ flashed up on the screen, and I thought, “Oh … I … why?” I did not like the image. I mean, it wasn’t all bad—it was pretty good, actually—but it’s used over and over again. I thought, “Well, what am I going to do? Am I going to complain or contribute?” It’s really easy to just complain. So, I decided that I would stop, and that I’d give it a try, even if I failed. And believe me, I’ve failed many times, which is evident in a lot of the images that you’ll see of mine out there that I wish I could take back. But we do what we can.

But shouldn’t I get good first?

“But shouldn’t I get good first?” A lot of people would say, “Why don’t you just work on making a good painting—learn how to paint—and then you can try to do an image of Christ.” But I had one professor who said you need to develop things simultaneously. You can’t really separate the subject matter from the delivery of the subject matter. If you work your whole life to get good at painting a still life or a portrait, it’s a slightly different discipline from trying to paint sacred topics.

So, like the scripture says, “I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.”

And so I determined to just get started and to learn little by little as I was going.

If we determine that we should do it—how? “O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day.”

We must recognize that excellence and quality are a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and about life and about God. If we don’t care much about these basic things, then such not caring carries over into the work we do, and our work becomes shabby and shoddy.

Real craftsmanship, regardless of the skill involved, reflects real caring, and real caring reflects our attitude about ourselves, about our fellowmen, and about life. —“The Gospel Vision of the Arts”

So, we learn little by little, but we keep learning, right? We’ve just got to keep trying to do a better job.

Three approaches: Classic, Realist, Abstract

All right. This may not make sense, or this may be something that’s not new to you. It’s just something that I’ve been thinking about the last few weeks preparing for this. And hopefully it will be of use to somebody.

I’ve thought about this as there’s three camps of approaching Christ imagery:

Classic

First of all, classic. And when I say “classic,” I’m referring to two definitions: “of or relating to the ancient Greeks and Romans or their culture” and “serving as a standard of excellence: of recognized value.” So, there’s no question that—well, I guess there could be a question—but I think it’s generally understood that a lot of our imagery draws from classic imagery. Ancient Roman and Greek images of gods, “The Good Shepherd.” You all are much more scholarly than I and could come up here and give a thorough presentation on the subject. That’s one camp.

A good example of that would be the Christus that we have in our visitor’s center—a reproduction of that done by Thorvaldsen. Another example would be Bouguereau, who is probably more idolized by artists that I know than any other artist. If you look at these figures, they are all gods. There is not a blemish on any of these people. They all have distinctly classical features: broad noses, mouths that are not wide. Even that mustached man with the whip is a god. You could see all of these figures in marble.

Realist

Another camp is the realist camp. A definition that I found for “realist” that I resonated with is “concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary.”

[[ Image ]]

There are elements of realism in this in that the face could be that guy down the street that posed.

[[ Image ]]

Here’s another one—you can see that the guard is wearing Flemish-looking clothing. Which is fascinating to me, and it honestly doesn’t bother me, but I know that it might bother some people. The element of realism I’m trying to depict with this image is that we’re looking at things we have in front of us.

And so elements of our time period enter into these historical pieces of Christ. In some respects, it’s kind of like Somewhere in Time, when he sees that coin and it sucks him out of the past and back into the present. It takes us out of that space where we’re completely lost in the narrative, in the historical piece—where we’re enveloped in the story of Christ completely.

[[ Image ]]

Here’s another one. I’ve heard from so many people—you know, “Christ didn’t have a beard,” “He didn’t wear robes like a Greek god,” and so on and so forth. I think that comes from the realist camp—wanting to capture things accurately and historically.

Abstract

And then a third camp is abstract. The definition I chose for that was “expressing a quality apart from an object.” Now, obviously this is an oversimplification. There are many forms of stylization that are not classic or abstract but maybe have elements of those things. And there’s a whole spectrum in the middle of these three camps. This is Georges Rouault:

[[ Image ]]

“Expressing a quality apart from an object.” We know that this is not supposed to represent the specific features of Christ by any means, but rather, the principle, the spirit, and the essence. And I had to include this one [laughter] as an abstract piece—the one on the right. I don’t know how much of the essence remains in this abstract piece, but times being what they are… And then this is another Rouault:

[[ Image ]]

And certainly there are scriptural justifications for painting from any of these three camps. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” The concern with a classic approach is to attain perfect beauty, which is certainly an aspect of Jesus Christ that we seek.

The scriptural justification for painting a realist image—actually, there’s two here: “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” And then: “When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves.” We’re more concerned here with painting what we know. That sounds very correlated to me. It sounds very Mormon—it sounds like a testimony meeting. And that is certainly a huge aspect of what we’re about, right?

And then abstract: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them.” “Expressing a principle or a symbol through invention or reduction” is the goal of the abstract artist.

So, the model for the classic would be Apollo or other Greek gods. A model for the realist might be the neighbor down the street. That’s a little bit of a cynical poke by me right there. I’m going to step into cynicism for one minute and then I’ll get back to my nice former self.

[[ Images ]]

These are just some images. I’m going to flip through those one more time, and I just want you to think, “Is there any of this in our art?” The model for the abstract artist would be none, or at least the result would not indicate that there was a model.

[[ Image ]]

This is an old abstract piece that I did.

I brought a book that I’m working on. It looks like a scrapbook right now because that’s the prototype, but when we actually finish it, it will be nice and book-like with a preface by Brad Kramer. I want to read a little paragraph from what he says:

The emblems of the Last Supper were metaphors for—“in remembrance of”—his body and blood. But he did not say, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these … you have done it in remembrance of me,” but rather that you have done it unto him.

This association of the very person of Jesus with the actual bodies of those most in need acquires a new and perhaps even intimidating and frightening significance in light of the post-resurrection encounters because it becomes so shockingly literal. The homeless veteran on the freeway on-ramp or the pathetic rehabbing junkie going through agonizing withdrawals or the hardened prisoner. We are to encounter these people and minister to them as to the Messiah because they are the Messiah, not just figuratively but in the sense that any or all of them could literally be the anonymous Christ we memorialize in the hymn famously sung to the Prophet Joseph in his own prison cell.

The sweet spot

[[ Image ]]

The big circle represents what I feel like most of our aim is—a lot of artists want to reach that classical beauty. Why don’t we reach it? I think a lot of it has to do with that we don’t have the same training that they had. You know, that probably reached its peak in the mid 1800s right about the time of the restoration of the gospel, incidentally. If you look at the French salons, you know those pieces that are just astounding in their facility. So usually we mostly end up here trying to make it over to the classic, but painting our neighbor down the street.

This is where I hang out a lot, but it’s not where correlation likes to hang out, so you don’t see many of these images used officially by the Church. What I’d like to propose is that there’s a beautiful sweet spot in the middle.

Successful works

[[ Image ]]

This is an example, I think, of a beautiful combination. What is classical about it? I think that’s pretty self-evident. This is “Behold the Man” by Ciseri. If you look at the robes, the architecture, there’s so much of the classic in it. Look at the man on the left—look at that face. Those are realist. You can kind of feel the sweat on that guy’s beard right there. I feel like it’s pretty astounding. What about abstract? Is there abstraction here? I would argue that simply by placing Christ almost beyond profile, where we’re just catching the sight of his nose, where we’re catching the silhouette of his crown against the sky—that is abstraction. What a beautiful example of the combination of the three.

[[ Image ]]

Another one by Cisari. This one’s a little dramatic, but the combination of the classical, the realist, and the abstract are fantastic. Again, the way the face is lit, the way we lose the man’s face on the far left in shadow. It’s fantastic!

[[ Healing at the Pool of Bethesda ]]

Here’s one that we do use quite a bit. There’s a probably a greater balance of classicism and realism and abstraction in this piece than most pieces. We can see the robes are fairly classical. The man sitting down by the pool with the red cap is so real and his eyes looking out, engaging the viewer, recognize that there is viewer interaction with the piece. They in fact challenge the viewer as to the viewer’s own actions and feelings on the subject. And then abstraction. I just cannot believe how unfinished that man underneath the blanket is—and that man down on the lower left side—they are so roughly rendered, it is amazing to me. And the textures and the abstract looseness of the stonework on the upper half of the painting is really fantastic.

[[ Christ in the Desert ]]

This is by Kramskoi, a Russian guy. I love this painting. I love that this captures a man stricken with grief, a Christ who is suffering in the wilderness. The abstraction of the rocks, the classicism of the robes, and the realism of the face are truly a magical combination.

[[ Christ and the Disciples ]]

I love this and it’s kind of spooky. This is one of my favorite artists, Dagnan-Bouveret. He was a turn-of-the-century French artist capturing the power, the wonder, the awe, the dare I say magic of the resurrected Christ.

[[ The Crucifixion? ]]

This is Eakins. It’s so fantastic. Look at the abstraction of the face. We’re not forced to accept his interpretation of the features of Christ. The use of light, the use of classicism and realism and abstraction work simultaneously to make this a great painting.

[[ Image ]]

And another Bloch. I just love it, and probably can’t justify it. I don’t know if this one supports my theory, but I’ll just say that abstraction comes in those men in the back. That ability to render such magnificent detail within such a close range of values, to set those men in the back but feel their presence—I wish that that was something I could capture.

So in that sweet spot we’re able to maintain the beauty, the ecstasy, the awe, and wonder of the classic with the relatability, the accessibility of the realist—the human—and to capture the unspeakable, the humility, and the essence of the abstract.

Personal attempts

I was just going to show you some of my pieces and then some pieces I’ve collected, but do you guys have any questions or comments about anything that I’ve said thus far.

Audience: On the issue of representing the resurrected Christ, […]

Kirk: The question was that we have few descriptions of the resurrected Christ to go by. Some of Joseph Smith’s said he was radiant, and that we don’t see that in artwork. The question was how do we capture that, or how do we reconcile it with classical images?

Audience: In my work, I try to work from the Restoration on. So I’m looking at trying to portray a Christ that the brethren would recognize—the perfect man that we would recognize.

Kirk: That’s a loaded question. A man that we would recognize—recoginition is part of the challenge. There are cues, you know—even in the Christ that was unbearded, we recognize that that was Christ because of elements within the composition. The tied hands, the crown of thorns. I think what I’m suggesting is that when we paint in this kind of sweet spot, we capture the greatest amount of recognition. But the fact is that whatever you do, in terms of imagery, there will be a large group that doesn’t recognize your image as transcendent. The flip side of that is that there will be a group that does, and who your image will mean everything to. It’s worth doing, and it’s worth trying to sort that out and to find whatever answers you can find.

Audience: This is wonderful. I’m wondering if there is anything that we can do as an LDS artistic community to try to promote this kind of thinking into correlation so that the Church uses more.

Kirk: There are people I am always grateful to for trying. A lot of the art directors in the magazines are always looking for great art and I get emails and calls from them asking for images. The difficulty is a lot of times art kind of gets hijacked when it’s requested or when there are exterior demands before it’s completed, so even those requests sometimes can jinx a work of art, in my experience. And then oftentimes they will submit those, and depending on who is reviewing them, many times they won’t be accepted.

But you’re right—I think sometimes I for one am not doing my part by not submitting enough work to official circles, but it’s kind of how I’ve found a way to survive artistically, so maybe one day I’ll reconcile those two.

I think a lot of it is up to the art directors in the Church Office Building. And then there are other things we can do like the Association for Mormon Letters meetings about these things, the Mormon Arts Foundation—you know, just discuss it among each other and try to make the best art that we can, and hopefully it will move people. And whether it moves people in official circles or outside of those circles, I think those are both acceptable offerings.

Audience: When you are painting any image that involves the Savior as a physical presence, do you have some sort of personal vision of his features in mind, or do you consciously use different ideas of how he looks?

Kirk: I consciously come at it with different approaches at different times because it’s an ongoing search. I don’t pretend to have any revelation beyond what other people do in terms of what Christ looks like, but I try to feel my way through it, and so, for me, the development of a piece will be in stages, and I will set it aside, come back, try to feel my way into something that feels more like what I think the image should feel like, that portrays more of all of those characteristics—beauty, ecstasy, awe, wonder, reverence, the unspeakable humility.

And hopefully when it’s done it arrives at that. If all of the artists are doing that, should they all arrive at the same result? I don’t think so. I think it’s part of the body of Christ, where the hand needs the foot and they don’t necessarily agree on what Christ looks like but we feel the same when we see something that we respond to, even if it’s a different thing that we respond to for me and you. We have the same feeling in our heart, and I think that’s where the Spirit enters in.

[[ The Last Supper ]]

This is one of my earliest pieces. This is “The Last Supper.”

[[ The Temptation ]]

This is another really early piece, called “The Temptation,” and it’s assembled boards with a big hole underneath. A big chasm. This is one of my early attempts at doing a really hard historical piece, and if I were to redo it, I think I would do a better job today, but many of you have seen this piece so I thought I would include it.

[[ Grey Day Golgotha ]]

This is “Grey Day Golgotha.”

Audience: Why did you choose that angle? Why are we looking at it from behind someone else’s cross?

Kirk: You know, I’ve been asked that question a few times. I think—

Audience: It’s very striking.

Kirk: Thank you!

Audience: That’s why I’m asking you, just so you know.

Kirk: I think it was because we’ve seen so many images of straightforward three crosses. As artists we’re trying not to repeat imagery but to create something that’s new in some ways. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve been exposed to movies and panning cameras and things like that. It was suggested to me by a movie maker that that was the reason why.

[[ Crucifixion ]]

This is called “Crucifixion.” There was a painting of mine in a show in Atlanta that fell off the wall or they dropped it or something—it’s unclear to me—but the frame broke and they shipped it back to me in this crate. And so I wanted to make something out of the crate. You can see the fragile lettering on the left-hand side. The crate became a symbol to me of the outer housing of the body that was broken, and so I made the lines converge on Christ’s broken side. Also, the flowers were meant to be kind of a memorial so the painting was a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice.

[[ Gethsemane ]]

Some of you may be familiar with these pieces if you went to the BYU Museum of Art show Beholding Salvation a few years back. This one was called “Gethsemane.” Again, if I were to do this today, I would change things—I would find a way to possibly abstract the face of Christ a little bit.

[[ The Baptism ]]

This one was also in that show: “The Baptism.” I wish you could see this one in real life. The original is—I love it. I’d done quite a few traditional or classical takes on Christ, and some of them went pretty badly. There was always this spot at the beginning where it was just simple shapes and fields of color. One day I just said, “I’m going to throw caution to the wind; I’m going to do forty of these.” And leave them in that early stage, or at least have the final product have that same feeling as that early stage. This is one of those. I did a series of forty, which, incidentally, is not exactly the same as the forty that are in that book that we’re doing, Forty Images of Christ. Many of them are the same, but it’s a compilation of multiple series in the book.

[[ Descent from the Cross ]]

This is “Descent from the Cross.” Just a tiny, tiny painting. A lot of times these tiny ones turn out better than the grandiose.

[[ Image ]]

This is a giant one. This one is currently on display at Krieger-Ricks in Springville. It’s about six by fourteen or something. Anyway, the face of Christ was a little frightening, so I’ve changed it since then.

[[ Loaves and Fishes ]]

This is called “Loaves and Fishes.” I glued these baskets onto the panels, so it’s kind of a collage with baskets.

[[ Every Knee Shall Bow ]]

This is “Every Knee Shall Bow.” Here’s an example of a piece that has been used a little bit by the Church, a lot by Deseret Book, was at times correlated out and at times correlated in, depending on who was correlating. The thing about this piece that everybody sees and only the artist was dumb enough not to see was that they all look like sheep. I’d done this giant piece, six by eighteen feet, hung it up on the wall of the Springville art museum, and a lady walks up and says, “Wow, those look like sheep.” And I had not intended it at all. Since then I’ve heard that like three hundred times. So good things happen whether you want them to or not.

[[ Wine Press ]]

This one’s called “Wine Press.” I have since been to Jerusalem and seen some wine presses and I’ll probably do this theme again differently.

[[ Image ]]

This is one of the forty Christ portraits.

[[ Image ]]

Another one. This is the one I was going to keep. It was hanging on my wall, but then a really good friend from kindergarten—actually, she was my girlfriend in kindergarten—wanted it, so I sold it to her and kept a different piece.

[[ Sight Restored ]]

This one’s called “Sight Restored.” I was trying to capture the abstraction or the fuzziness, the blurriness of a man regaining his sight, looking up into the hands of the Healer.

[[ Image ]]

This is one that I did for my church building, so it has a special place in my heart. I’ve since moved, but I’m glad that I was able to do this and leave a piece of my heart and my work in our church building. So if you go to the building next to Kiwanis Park in Provo and you get a chance to stop in—there’s two chapels right next to each other, and the one that’s closer to the park is the Oak Hills 7th and 1st Ward building. This painting is hanging in the hall. We even snuck in and put a little spotlight on it so go check it out and turn the lights on.

[[ Water into Wine ]]

This one is called “Water into Wine.” This one’s kind of invented. There are artist friends of mine who are adamant that we should not go to the classical, that those were answers, solutions found by another time, another place, another people, and that we need to find our own solutions. I’ve seen some of the things he’s advocating, and I think the Christ figure here is invented enough that it might pass his expectations, I don’t know. But I believe that there is value in the classical, as I’ve already mentioned.

[[ Christ Among the Spirits ]]

This one is from a series that I did, an Easter series. This is “Christ Among the Spirits.” One of my favorite parts in Mormon film is that depiction from The Lamb of God of Christ visiting the spirits. I don’t know if it’s the imagery or the music or just the concept related in the scriptures, but I’m sure that that had to do with my creation of this image. Yes, it’s embarrassingly Minerva Teichert-ish too—only embarrassing because you don’t want to copy another artist, but if you had to copy an artist, it would be Minerva.

[[ The Greatest in the Kingdom ]]

This one is “The Greatest in the Kingdom.”

[[ The Garden Tomb ]]

This one is from that Easter series, “The Garden Tomb.” You can see that these paintings are very disparate, spread stylistically. It’s floating around within that triangle trying to find something, to find a good spot to be in.

[[ Feeding the Five Thousand ]]

This is another “loaves and fishes” painting, “Feeding the Five Thousand”.

[[ The Petition of the Blind ]]

This is called “The Petition of the Blind.” At one point in the scriptures we read of two blind men that call out to Christ to be healed. The people with Christ try to shush them and Christ says no, that’s fine, and goes to heal them. This my depiction of that scene.

[[ Lovest Thou Me More Than These ]]

This was my entry in the most recent Church competition. This is Christ and the fishermen, “Lovest Thou Me More Than These.” The scene in the scriptures is a morning scene, so I tried to capture the sun coming up but simultaneously the sunset, so the sun is setting on Christ’s mortal ministry and rising on the ministry of his apostles.

Q&A

Okay, that’s my work. Do you guys have questions about that before I show you some pieces I’ve collected?

Audience: You’ve probably had Hagen Haltern at one time or another.

Kirk: I did.

Audience: He talks a lot about anagogical art, art that guides up and directs up. If you look at something that’s realistic, and if you feel pressured to have something that has precision and exactitude to a real measure, how is it possible for that to guide up to be anagogical?

Kirk: What’s that big word that you just used? Anagogical?

Audience: Yeah, he talks about that, that’s one of his big words.

Kirk: Unfortunately that was like a different life, and I hardly remember—I mean, unconsciously I use things that I learned from school all the time, and my teachers taught me a lot. I just cannot recall many particular things. But what you’re saying resonates with me quite a bit.

Like I said, I visited Israel last year and one of the coolest things for me was I got to sit in an art school lecture there at the Jerusalem Center school taught by Israel Hershberg. In his lecture he taught about revelation and how the art is not revealing something when it’s all revealed. Of course, again when we are talking about Church magazines’ official use, the principal goal is to show what’s been revealed, to show what we know. But is that what art is about? I think that’s a small fraction of what some part of art is about.

But the larger perspective is about revelation. We want the viewer to have a revelatory experience of their own while they are viewing it, and that is hard for anybody with any sort of artistic soul when it is all laid out in detail from the outset. So, I really appreciate that and I want to figure out what that word is and write it down.

Audience: This might not be fair—maybe I should have asked before you started this—but we talk about and I relate to the principle of how can anyone even attempt this? Whether you are writing or sculpting or painting, how can we attempt to create an image of Christ? And I’m wondering if among your art if you found pieces or expressions that for you hit the mark, that for you, you are really happy with this piece?

Kirk: Well, that’s not fair.

Audience: I know it’s not and you revealed a little of that as you went through but—

Kirk: No, no that’s a great question and the fact is that, oh, I feel like the ones that attempt classicism or realism fall shorter of the mark, for me, than the abstract pieces. Some of the abstract pieces fail miserably also but there’s this three percent that I can’t finish to make something perfect, usually. Sometimes it’s more like forty percent. I really can’t stand to see some of my images. One of my images in print, I can’t stand to see, but people keep responding to it, so I feel kind of guilty pulling it off, because it’s something that resonates with someone else, is transcendent for them. I think that most artists who do good work are probably overly critical or maybe appropriately critical and therefore have a hard time reaching the perfection that they want. And hopefully I fit into that category.

Audience: This is more of a technical question. I noticed that some of your paintings have a really elongated, vertical format. Is that a favorite orientation or format?

Kirk: From the beginning I’ve never gone to the art store and bought an 8x10” panel. Probably the Ensign would like that. But I’ve always just cropped my sketches multiple ways, and whatever crop I love, those are the proportions, the dimensions, the format of my panel or my canvas.

Personal Collection of Christ Images

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This is a piece by Tennessee artist Bunn Gray, which I was drawn to because it reminded me of Rouault. I found with later research that he was pretty much directly quoting Rouault. I love this piece. I saw it in the gallery where I was showing. Gray passed away actually while it was there in the gallery, and the gallery owner bought it for me because she knew that I loved it.

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These are two pieces that I collected in Mexico. They were each on a cross, so I think they were used for worship. But I just loved them as art pieces, and I got them for like twenty-five bucks. I feel kind of guilty about that.

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This was by a girl that was my studio assistant for a while. Streams of Mercy by Annie Henrie.

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This is a pencil box by Dallan Wright, who is now an art director with Deseret Book, but I’ve known him for many, many years. And it’s the first image that I’ve ever seen him create, so he just did it for me.

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This is a painted sketch by a bronze artist, so he was really stepping out of his comfort zone to do this for me. Ben Hammond.

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This is one of mine—I’ve done a series of bronzes. This is the one I kept from the series. They’re all different with different finishes and different materials of a base, and you can see that one down here. It’s as if the elements combined to make a hinted portrait of the Savior.

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This is one by an LDS artist, Erasmo Fuentes. He’s known for the missionaries riding bikes—big bronze at the MTC. I just saw this piece and loved it, and it was my birthday present last year from my wife.

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This is by Gary Ernest Smith, a very well-known and respected LDS artist. This is John 17, the intercessory prayer.

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This is the same olive wood that many, many people have. It’s kind of a standard cut, but I particularly love this one—the dust that had collected on it had this kind of old patina that most of them don’t.

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This is a Wayne Kimball. I believe this was a Christmas card for the art department or for BYU or something a few years back. Well, it was when I was in school—and my friend was Wayne Kimball’s assistant and he rescued this from the garbage. So, Wayne, if you’re out there, I probably shouldn’t have this, but I’ll never surrender it because I love it so much.

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This is by a friend, Greg Newbold, who’s a well-known illustrator.

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This is from a similar series. After the forty Christ portraits, I did ten more that were inspired by the Shroud of Turin. The subtitle is Golden Shroud.

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This is a Chris Young that was my Christmas present—a tiny piece that’s also down there.

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I just received this one from a 14-year-old who did this woodblock print, and I just loved it. He has an amazing story of health struggles and issues that he’s had to deal with, and he’s turned to Christ to find strength and peace.

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And this is by my son Brian [Bryan?], a few years back. He’s older now, but he was maybe six or seven when he did this.

So that is all I have. If you have any questions, I’d love to answer those in person. And I’ll just move out of the way so that whoever is presenting next can get set up.

Margaret Young: Again, keeping it personal, we had Kirk’s mother introduce him. My mother reviewed it during the presentation and said, “This is an amazing talk,” and I absolutely agree.

I have to tell you my memories of the Richards home, because I grew up in their ward—my brother is now the bishop of the place where the painting Kirk talked about that’s on display (it’s easy to find, just by Kiwanis Park). But I remember the Richards home was very small, and as Claude and Cynthia got together, it got bigger and bigger, and I think you could enter and just feel like you were getting more creative. The music—Kirk hadn’t started his artwork yet—but just the feel of it, that it was fully creative. And then, that’s where my husband and I went, where Kirk had his studio there.

I’ve been looking and looking for images of the Savior that I really want. I have one that was a gift that’s Greg Olsen. That was a gift, so that meant something to me. But as Bruce and I went around this home that had been amplified, magnified into a creative edifice, where the air just made you want to do something good, and I saw what Kirk had done, I just—of course, I kept looking at the price tags—but I said, “These are the kinds of things I want. This really speaks to me.”

Well, I think in the Association for Mormon Letters, especially considering this is Easter weekend, I feel like I have just been beautifully prepared to celebrate Easter with my family. I also think that, thinking of family, this is such a challenge to all of us. We have so many artists—I’ve got a number of students here who are themselves blossoming artists, and some are well on their way to full flowering. But that example of seeing the Richards’ house grow from a little thing to something really big and full of music and then full of art—I think that example of refuge that brims with creativity, where—I was reading in the Doctrine & Covenants, and it talks about “thy imagination shall be borne up as wings of eagles.” That’s what we usually associate with “and thou shalt run and not be weary and walk and not faint.” But that idea that our imaginations may be borne up as wings of eagles also suggests that we look up, and that what we do edifies—that it’s praiseworthy, of good report, and all of that. I would like us to give Kirk one more round of applause. I thought that was just wonderful.