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January 2007

Crossing the Red Sea

by Justin Gerard

The story of the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 has long been a favorite of ours. The Israelites have just been set free after 400 years of slavery in Egypt and are going into the wilderness to worship God. The Pharaoh changes his mind and sends his army after them. While God moves the pillar of cloud between the Egyptians and His people so that the Egyptians cannot see, Moses lifts his rod and the waters of the Red Sea were parted by a strong wind.

"And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left."

Exodus 14:22 (KJV) This wonderful story of God’s power and protection of His children is depicted beautifully in this unique piece. Justin chose to focus on the emotions of some of those who walked where no man had gone before. While all saw God’s power first hand, many must have been fearful of the Egyptians, the wall of water on each side and what might be ahead of them on the road to Canaan.

In the Artist’s Words…

I’ve always loved the underwater exhibits at Sea World and Ripley’s aquariums. There is something amazing about them - you feel like you are in a place that humans were never meant to go. You can see it in the faces of the Parrotfish. They also know you shouldn’t be there and if they could get through that glass they would eat you. The octopus disdains you and the sharks are all too well fed to care. I couldn’t help but think about those exhibits when I began this piece.

When I started I wanted to do more than simply show the scene of freed slaves crossing over a dry sea bed. I wanted to do something that went a little deeper into man’s relationship to God. I wanted to look much further into the expressions and the feelings of the Israelites while all this was going on. On the left you see people who are worried and nervous looking - People in doubt, but then in the middle you have a child silhouetted in front of the whales and ocean. He is in awe of God’s power. On the far right there is a hopeful and joyous mother and her child. Beyond that we have one guy who is looking distraught and pointing backward. Maybe he sees the Egyptian army approaching, or maybe he thinks they should all go back. I want to stress in the image that these aren’t perfect people. That most of these people are complaining, bickering and skeptical. The point is that God saves us in spite of ourselves.

One element that I knew, from the very beginning of my work on this piece, was going to be highly important to me was the texture. I wanted the water to have the feel of being pressed back by mighty winds, or by air pressure of some sort. I decided that I wanted to try and achieve this through the use of traditional media brush strokes. So I printed out my sketch, and glued it down onto a wooden panel, and after it had dried I oil painted the piece over the sketch. This gave me the ability to work really strong texture into the land beneath the figures feet, as well as the background of sweeping water.