Pigments & Ponderings

Art Credit: James Coates.  His beautiful artwork can be found here: https://i.etsystatic.com/9350268/r/il/d8997a/1734994664/il_794xN.1734994664_ilni.jpg Seeking A Witness (&   why it’s important)  In the very first chapters of the Book of Mormon, Lehi’s family goes through a major upheaval when everything about their life changed overnight. This, as we know, didn’t go over very well with Laman and Lemuel.  The difference in attitude between Nephi and these brothers is explained in the following verse.     1 Ne. 2:16 " …wherefore,  I did cry unto the Lord ; and behold he did visit me, and  did soften my heart  that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father;  wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers." I had always assumed Nephi was 100% on board with his father from the beginning.  But through this last, careful reading, I noticed an important statement I hadn’t be...

Dealing With Darkness The rising sun dispels all darkness. Watercolor by Nikki One day after working with a client who was suffering from severe anxiety, I was pondering depression and anxiety and how it is such a plague of our day.  The very next morning during my scripture study, I came across a story in Helaman chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon; one which I had read a hundred times but until then, had never seen anything but a story. This time reading, the Lord opened a new level of understanding to me. Nephi the son of Helaman and his brother Lehi left their professions to go teach the gospel and actually had incredible success is some areas, even among the Lamanites. At one point, when among a more hardened group, they were imprisoned for several days without food.  When these Lamanites and defectors came to slay them, Nephi and Lehi were “encircled about as if by fire, even so much that the Lamanites could not hurt them”. The Lamanites were overshadowed by a cloud of darkn...

LET GOD PREVAIL Last month was the October 2021 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints.   Although all were excellent, the crowning addresses were from the Prophet, President Nelson. Anyway,  one of his that was particularly intriguing to me (and became even more so as I studied it) was entitled "Let God Prevail".  There is so very much more to this talk than this one aspect, so I encourage you to study the whole thing, but he started off by telling how he had learned that one of the Hebraic meanings for the name Israel is "Let God prevail" and " Thus the very name of  Israel  refers to a person who is  willing  to let God prevail in his or her life."  The thought of "letting God prevail" reminds me of the above meme which has been floating around the internet (& if you happen to know who's work it is, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due). To me, it means being willing to submit ou...

Palms & Palms I call this one "The good man" as explained below.                                                             I call this sketch "I have graven thee".   Special thanks to my amazing husband for being the model for this drawing! Being one who continually strives to become more like his Savior, I can't think of anyone I would rather have!                                                               God is a Master Wordsmith! Although these two types of "palms" are very different, they are very much the same!  It was fun to discover this ingenious play on w...

Crown Forging 101 I call this watercolor, "Forging Crowns"  After the experience that I share below, I decided I wanted to paint a crown.  This is the only painting I have done so far that I haven't looked at something else to try to paint.  So this is what I came up with and it means so much to me, for several reasons... first off, because of the whole REASON I even became interested in the topic of "crowns" in the first place, and second,   THAT  reason, that experience, launched a whole new journey for me spiritually.                                                     I feel that the Lord was finally able to get through to me in a way that He could teach me HOW to actually ENJOY learning from the scriptures.  If you have read my 1st post, you'll know what a struggle I used to have in reading/learning.  But now ...