I am an artist and a senior at Memorial High School in Madison, Wisconsin. Over recent years I’ve created paintings and drawings of famous musicians and athletes and have been lucky to get to have many exciting life experiences working with these people.

 

In September of 2025, I decided that I wanted to try my most meaningful project yet — attempting a portrait of Jesus. 

 

This is my first attempt at an oil painting and also my first time doing a portrait without a specific reference point like a photo or a live figure. I used the Shroud of Turin as a guide for the structure of Jesus’ face, but otherwise entered into each day of painting with an openness to what I would put on canvas. 

 

Every time that I sat down at my easel, I prayed, “Jesus, reveal your face to me.” The painting took me about 77 hours of work across multiple weeks to complete. The prayer became a mantra repeating in my head throughout those many hours. 

 

Creating this portrait was very impactful upon my faith, because I felt Jesus steadily revealing himself to me throughout the process. Christ’s eyes were especially important to me as I continued painting. They emerged as the central focus of the portrait. 

 

Jesus’ image was revealed to me more clearly than ever as the face of love. 

 

I’ve completed the portrait, but I continue in everyday prayer asking Jesus to show me his face. I take it into all that I do in hopes that I can see him and respond to him a little better each day. 

 

My hope is that the seeing and meditating upon the portrait can have a similar impact upon others as the process of creating it has had on me.

 

I posted my progress of the portrait online over the weeks that I worked on it and was encouraged that over half a million people viewed it and seemed to have found it to be an impactful representation of Jesus. Below is a video meditation that I created of the final painting, focusing on the loving eyes of Jesus. I hope to be able to share it with many others.

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Various prints of the painting are available here