The Meaning

“Down The River” is a metaphoric illustration where I continue to go down a dark swampy river through my personal issues of my haunted past.

Before I even got started with this piece, I was deeply motivated by a song from NeedToBreathe called “Wasteland” (the version, “Live from the Woods”). The chanting and lyrics of this song really hit me deep in the heart when they sang, “Going down the river in the wasteland!” This is where I got the idea for a southern swamp because I know the band is from South Carolina and that is how I visualized the river and the banks.

This painting is very closely related to “Angels and Demons” which I did a few years before because it is about travelling in a spiritual direction and experiencing intense resistance along the way.

Ghost Behind Me

I hold up a lantern with the ghost of Christ behind me steering the boat I am in. If you look closely, you can see alligators in the river, just waiting to devour me as I travel onward through places that I have often never wanted to go inside and tried to hide from.

Past Issues

The dead trees on the banks of the river are illuminated by the light of the yellow moon to remind me that I have visited all these places of the dead within me, and they are now in the past. One dead tree has an owl on top of it, with an angry, frustrated expression on his face which was interesting to me after I painted him. To me, the owl expressed the many intense days and nights dealing with the growing pains of trying to trust God’s Spirit to lead me to let go of my past issues that have broken me down.

The Process

This piece was a lot of fun for me because there was plenty of room to blend different oil paints. I sketched outlines of myself, the boat, the river, and moon and blended freestyle for the rest of the piece.

I mixed a lot of black with green in this painting to give it a more erie expression. I did the same with the river and the sunset with the yellow moon coming up.