Inside the Book of Revelation — Painting the Visions of John
- Julia O'Sullivan of Jupigio-Artwork
- Dec 9, 2023
- 25 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
The Book of Revelation — Journal One
Painting a Vision Almost Impossible to Paint
The Book of Revelation is not an easy story to tell.
It is filled with visions that shift almost before the previous one has ended — angels, beasts, churches, seals, trumpets, fire, blood, strange creatures, destruction, judgement and extraordinary glimpses of Heaven.
When I decided to turn it into an artwork, I knew immediately that I couldn't simply paint every verse.
Nor did I want to.
I wanted to try to imagine what it might have felt like to be John.
To witness something so immense, strange and relentless that the human mind could barely keep pace with what it was seeing.
That became the foundation of this work.
I took the imagery described in Revelation and interpreted it through my own imagination. Sometimes I followed the description closely. At other times I deliberately changed the way something was represented because I wanted to explore what the symbolism meant to me.
Angels became powerful, androgynous sentinels rather than beautiful human figures.
The Lamb became a child.
A sea of glass became an intensely blue crystalline wall.
Voices became trumpets, lightning and flame.
And John's own body became part of the story.
Throughout the painting, I wanted beauty and horror to exist beside one another because that is how Revelation feels to me. There is extraordinary colour and light, but also violence, fear and destruction. There are moments of hope followed almost immediately by something terrifying.
As the visions accumulate, so does the painting.
It becomes crowded.
Chaotic.
Almost overwhelming.
That is deliberate.
This first journal takes you through the central painting, from John's first vision and the seven churches to the throne, the Lamb, the opening of the seals, the sounding of the trumpets and the visions that follow.
There are details hidden everywhere.
Some are obvious.
Others would be almost impossible to understand simply by looking at them.
So this is my way of opening the painting up and showing you why I put them there.
This isn't simply the story of the Book of Revelation.
It is the story of how I tried to paint it.
Chapter One — This Is Not Just a Book
What Does It Mean to Be Blessed by Reading?
Before I began The Book of Revelation, one line stopped me:
“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy…”
I found myself returning to those words.
Blessed.
Why?
Why should someone be blessed simply by reading what was to come?
I have never felt particularly connected to God in the conventional sense. I wasn't approaching Revelation as a theologian, nor was I setting out to create a religious artwork that would tell other people what they should believe.
I was approaching it as me.
An artist. A questioner. Someone fascinated by symbolism, human behaviour and the stories we have carried with us for centuries.
And yet those opening words resonated with me.
They almost seemed to offer an invitation: read this carefully and there is something here for you.
So I did.
A Gift of Words
I began to think about the phrase differently.
Perhaps the blessing wasn't something that would simply be bestowed upon me because I had turned the pages.
Perhaps the gift was in the words themselves.
And if these words were a gift, what exactly were they trying to give me?
That question stayed with me as I read.
Revelation is extraordinary. It is filled with creatures, angels, beasts, eyes, horns, seals, trumpets, destruction, blood, judgement, death, Heaven and rebirth. At times it is beautiful. At others it is terrifying. Sometimes it is almost impossible to visualise.
But beneath all that extraordinary imagery, I began wondering whether something else was happening.
Could these ancient words be speaking not only about God, Heaven or the end of the world, but to something hidden much deeper within ourselves?
Perhaps that was where my blessing would be found.
Not necessarily in believing every word literally, but in questioning it.
Reading with an Artist's Eyes
Once I began reading in that way, I couldn't simply pass over an image.
If John described something, I wanted to see it.
If there were seven candlesticks, I wanted to know why.
If a creature had eyes where I didn't expect eyes to be, I wanted to imagine what that might actually look like.
If a seal was broken, I wanted to know what was behind it.
I filled pages with notes.
And slowly I realised that I wasn't simply reading Revelation anymore.
I was dismantling it.
Every strange description became another question. Every question produced an image. And every image created another problem: How could I possibly bring all of this together in one artwork?
That was when the idea of the book began.
Opening the Book
It seemed appropriate that an artwork born from a book should become a book itself.
But mine would not simply be read.
It would be opened.
Inside would be the turmoil — the visions, destruction, creatures, judgement and darkness that had filled my imagination as I read.
And when the book closed, that darkness would give way to something completely different: the brightness of the Gates of Heaven, metal catching the light and the possibility of what lay beyond everything we had just witnessed.
Darkness within. Light without.
The physical act of opening and closing the sculpture would become part of experiencing it.
Of course, at that point I had absolutely no idea how I was going to make it work.
That problem would come later.
First, I needed to understand what I had read.
So, Was This the Blessing?
I didn't begin this project expecting Revelation to bring me closer to God.
I began with curiosity.
But those first words had challenged me.
Blessed is the one who reads.
Perhaps some books give us answers.
Perhaps others are gifts because they make us ask questions we would never otherwise have thought to ask.
And perhaps the blessing is different for everyone who reads them.
I still didn't know what mine would be.
But I had opened the book.
And now I wanted to see where it would take me.
Chapter Two — John: Where the Vision Begins
What If This Isn't About the End of the World?
John's vision begins with something that fascinated me.
He describes falling at the feet of the figure before him "as dead."
Those words stayed with me.
Because as I began trying to turn John's vision into paint, I found myself wondering whether death was really the ending being described here at all.
What if it was the beginning?
And then came a question that followed me throughout the making of this artwork:
What if Revelation is a journey?
Not simply a prophecy about something that will one day happen to the world, but a journey through everything we might eventually have to surrender.
What Happens When We Let Go?
As I worked my way through Revelation, I became increasingly interested in its repeated destruction.
Things fall.
Things burn.
Things are cast down.
Parts of the world disappear into darkness. Judgement comes. Terrible things are witnessed. And yet, beyond all of that turmoil, there is eventually light.
Heaven.
Renewal.
A new beginning.
So I began asking questions that the text itself couldn't answer for me.
Is this what happens in death?
Do we somehow have to shed parts of ourselves?
Do the darkest parts of us have to be confronted, separated and finally left behind before we can move towards the light?
Do we carry the turmoil of an entire lifetime with us until there comes a point when we simply have to let it go?
Perhaps all the destruction I was painting wasn't destruction for its own sake.
Perhaps destruction was necessary before renewal could begin.
I didn't know.
I still don't.
But those questions began changing the way I looked at the imagery in front of me.
The Third That Kept Disappearing
One thing particularly intrigued me as I read: the repeated idea of a third.
A third destroyed.A third darkened.A third consumed or taken away.
Why a third?
That repetition made me wonder whether I was looking at something more than physical destruction.
I began imagining parts of ourselves being stripped away.
Could there be something within us that has to be relinquished? Something bound to darkness while another part continues onwards?
And if so, what would we have to surrender?
Our anger?
Our greed?
Our pride?
Our pain?
Our attachment to the person we believed ourselves to be?
These weren't theological conclusions. They were the questions running through my head while I painted.
And perhaps because I wasn't approaching Revelation with fixed religious answers, I allowed myself to ask them.
Is John's Journey Our Journey?
The more I painted, the more I wondered whether John's extraordinary vision could be read as an internal struggle.
He witnesses terror, violence, temptation, judgement and destruction before eventually arriving somewhere entirely different.
What if that journey is something we all recognise in a smaller way?
We spend our lives accumulating things — experiences, memories, loves, resentments, successes, failures, possessions, identities.
We build ourselves from them.
But at the end, perhaps the journey is reversed.
Perhaps we have to relinquish them.
Layer after layer.
Until there is nothing left to hold onto.
And only then can something new begin.
There was something strangely comforting in that thought.
Revelation might appear to be a book about endings, but I was beginning to see the possibility that it might actually be a book about starting again.
A Journey I Would Meet Again
Years later, I found myself circling these same questions when I began creating Dante's Inferno.
Dante's journey takes him through Hell, onwards through Purgatory and ultimately towards Paradise.
Again there was that movement.
Darkness.
Trial.
Transformation.
Light.
And I began wondering whether these stories, separated by centuries, were wrestling with something profoundly human.
Perhaps we have always needed stories that take us through darkness in order to imagine what might exist beyond it.
Perhaps the journey matters precisely because Paradise doesn't come first.
You have to travel towards it.
Painting the Questions
I wasn't painting answers.
That became increasingly important to me.
I was painting the questions that Revelation had put into my head.
What happens when we die?
What part of ourselves survives?
What must we surrender?
Do we have to confront everything we have been before we can finally let it go?
Is darkness punishment — or passage?
And is the end really an end at all?
I had begun this project wondering why someone might be blessed by reading Revelation.
Already, I was beginning to understand what those opening words might have meant for me.
The book was making me question things I had rarely allowed myself to contemplate.
And John was only at the beginning of his journey.
So was I.
Chapter Three — The Son of Man and the Seven Churches
How Do You Paint a Vision?
Once John had entered the vision, I had to follow him.
And almost immediately I encountered one of the challenges that would repeat throughout this entire artwork: Revelation doesn't describe an ordinary world.
It describes things that are recognisable and impossible at the same time.
A man.
Stars.
Churches.
Candlesticks.
A sword.
Fire.
But put them together as they are described and suddenly they become something altogether stranger.
My job wasn't to make them ordinary.
It was to try to paint what I had read.
The Son of Man
I placed the Son of Man above the clouds, floating rather than standing firmly upon the earth.
His garment is white, wrapped with a golden girdle upon which I placed the Alpha and Omega — the beginning and the end.
I wanted to retain the extraordinary details of John's description rather than soften them into something more conventionally human.
His eyes burn with flame.
His feet have the colour of brass.
In one hand are the seven stars.
In the other, the key of death.
And from his mouth emerges a double-edged blade.
It is a strange figure.
But Revelation is strange.
That became increasingly important to me as I painted. If I removed the elements that seemed peculiar simply to make the image more comfortable, I would also remove some of what had fascinated me about the words in the first place.
So the blade remained.
The burning eyes remained.
The stars remained.
I wasn't trying to make John's vision logical.
I was trying to give it form.
Seven Candlesticks — Seven Churches
Surrounding the Son of Man are the seven golden candlesticks.
But I didn't want to paint seven conventional candleholders.
The candlesticks represent the seven churches, so I began wondering:
Why couldn't the churches themselves become the candlesticks?
I designed seven individual buildings, loosely drawing upon the architecture of the period, and placed a flame at the top of each.
The building became the candlestick.
The church carried the flame.
But I didn't want the seven churches to become seven variations of the same object either.
Each had received something different.
And that gave me another opportunity to hide the words of Revelation inside the architecture.
Seven Churches. Seven Promises.
For Ephesus, the promise was to eat from the Tree of Life.
So the tree became part of its church.
Smyrna was promised the Crown of Life.
Its crown became part of the imagery.
To Pergamos came the white stone.
For Thyatira, the Morning Star.
Sardis received white raiment.
Philadelphia became associated with the pillar.
And finally there was Laodicea — the promise to sit upon his throne.
For this church, I created a throne within the architecture itself.
And I deliberately made that throne echo another throne elsewhere in the painting — the one upon which the Lamb would sit.
These weren't decorative additions.
They were my way of allowing the words I had read to become part of the physical identity of each church.
A viewer might initially see seven strange buildings.
Look more closely, however, and Revelation begins revealing itself.
Nothing Is There by Accident
This was becoming one of the rules of the entire artwork.
If the text gave me a detail, I wanted to find somewhere for it.
Sometimes it would dominate an entire section of the painting.
Sometimes it might become a tiny object that could easily be overlooked.
And sometimes, as with these seven churches, I could take several ideas and combine them into a single form.
Church.
Candlestick.
Flame.
Promise.
All occupying the same piece of painted architecture.
It meant that the painting could be looked at from a distance and read one way, then approached closely and read completely differently.
And that is how I wanted The Book of Revelation to work.
You shouldn't be able to see everything at once.
You have to look for it.
Perhaps that was another consequence of those words that had caught me at the very beginning:
Blessed is he that readeth.
I was beginning to realise that I wasn't simply illustrating what I had read.
I was hiding the reading inside the art.
And there was still an extraordinary amount left to hide.
Chapter 4 — Before the Throne
John's body remains behind.
At the bottom of the painting I have curled him naked into a foetal position. This was my way of suggesting two things at once: innocence and rebirth.
He is about to witness something beyond ordinary human understanding. I wanted him stripped of everything familiar, almost returned to the beginning of life before being taken into this extraordinary vision.
Above him, another world opens.
The Sea of Glass
Before the throne, Revelation describes “a sea of glass like unto crystal.”
I transformed that sea into the enormous blue crystalline wall that cuts through this section of the painting.
The intensity of the blue is deliberate.
Gold and yellow appear repeatedly throughout the work, so I wanted something that would break dramatically against them. The brilliant blue creates that contrast immediately. It separates this heavenly realm visually from what has come before and gives the throne something almost impossibly cold and crystalline upon which to exist.
Everything now leads towards its centre.
The Throne
I shaped the throne itself like a crown.
At its centre is not a conventional portrait of God, but an overwhelming circle of light. Emerald surrounds it, followed by the colours of the rainbow, referencing the rainbow described around the throne in Revelation.
Beneath it, lightning breaks through the darkness.
The throne therefore becomes less like a piece of furniture and more like a concentration of power — crown, light, colour and energy occupying the centre of the vision.
Before it burn the seven flames.
These are the seven lamps of fire described before the throne.
And sitting upon it is one of the most disturbing figures I painted.
The Lamb of God
My Lamb is not an animal.
He is a child.
I chose a human child because Christ came to earth in human form, but also because I wanted to retain the idea of the lamb as something innocent. A child gave me that vulnerability.
Then I deliberately corrupted the familiarity of that image.
From his head emerge the horns with eyes described in Revelation.
It is a terrifying concept when placed upon a child.
His own face has no eyes at all.
Only empty sockets.
He sits quietly upon the throne holding the book with the seals, surrounded by an image of immense power while appearing, at first glance, to be one of the least threatening figures within it.
That contradiction fascinated me.
The innocent and the terrifying occupy the same body.
The Four Beasts
Upon the blue glass are the four beasts.
Each has six wings and bears one of the four heads described in the vision — lion, ox, man and eagle — their bodies covered with eyes.
I didn't want them to overpower the throne.
They are deliberately more subtle within the composition, but they remain dominant presences once you notice them. I think of them almost as good guard dogs: constantly present, constantly watching, surrounding and protecting what lies at the centre.
Their many eyes reinforce that feeling.
Nothing passes unseen.
The Twenty-Four Elders
Around the throne sit the twenty-four elders.
I deliberately avoided making them look like ordinary old men. Their strange faces are intended to suggest something older than time, as though they belong to a world far beyond human age.
Their white cloaks have an almost stone-like quality because I wanted them to feel connected to the earth itself — ancient, solid and enduring.
Their harps emerge from their mouths, turning their voices into instruments of worship, while oil burns within parts of their forms.
And then there are their crowns.
The crowns themselves are black, but from their tops pours golden light.
For me, that light represents the richness contained within them. Their external crowns may be dark, but what emerges from inside is gold.
It is their inner light made visible.
Together, the throne, the Lamb, the seven flames, the elders and the four beasts create something I did not want to feel peaceful in the conventional sense.
It is magnificent.
But it is also strange.
Because John has entered a place governed by imagery that does not obey the rules of the world he has left behind.
And he has barely begun to see what is waiting for him.
Chapter 5 — Breaking the Seals
The child upon the throne holds the book.
And now the Lamb begins to open it.
This was the point where I wanted the painting to become more than something you simply stood in front of and looked at. The seals became physical objects within the sculpture itself, attached to the great steel gates surrounding the painting.
There are two sides to them.
From one direction, each seal contains my painted interpretation of what is released or revealed as the Lamb breaks it.
From the other, you see the metalwork.
When the gates are closed, the paintings disappear.
Only the metal faces of the seals remain.
I loved that idea. The imagery is physically concealed within the structure, waiting for the gates to open before the story behind the seals can be seen.
The First Seal — Conquest
The first seal releases the white horse.
Its rider carries a bow and is given a crown. He rides out conquering and to conquer.
I painted the bow and crown prominently into the image so that even within the small circular seal, the identity of this first horseman remains clear.
Conquest has begun.
The Second Seal — War
Then comes red.
The second horse is the horse of war, its rider carrying the great sword with which peace is taken from the earth.
Where the white horse advances through conquest, the red horse brings what so often follows it.
Violence.
The Third Seal — Famine
The third horse is black.
For famine, I placed the scales upon the rider's head and incorporated the barley and the penny from the biblical description.
The scales are about measurement — food weighed, counted and valued when there is no longer enough.
After conquest and war comes hunger.
The Fourth Seal — Death
The fourth seal brings Death.
By now there is a terrible progression taking place.
Conquest.
War.
Famine.
Death.
The first four seals are not isolated horrors. One seems capable of creating the conditions for the next.
That sequence was something I wanted the viewer to feel as they moved around the gates.
The Fifth Seal — The Martyrs
With the fifth seal, the imagery changes completely.
There is no horse.
Instead, I painted the souls of the martyrs spiralling upwards towards the light.
I wanted them to feel as though they were being drawn out of the darkness, their forms gathering into a great ascending movement as they rise.
From their mouths come flames.
These flames represent their inner souls — the spiritual light that remains within them despite what has been done to their physical bodies.
Their bodies may have been destroyed for their faith, but something within them has survived.
They rise together towards the light.
The Sixth Seal — When the Heavens Change
With the sixth seal, the heavens themselves begin to change.
The sun becomes black.
The moon becomes blood.
And the stars fall from heaven.
For this seal I deliberately broke the pattern I had established with the others.
The first five seals have two faces: the painted image on one side and metalwork on the other. As the gates open and close, what the viewer sees changes.
The sixth seal does not.
The blackened sun and blood moon can be seen whether the gates are open or closed, and there is no metal reverse concealing them.
I wanted light itself to become part of this seal.
The falling stars are made from stained glass, allowing the changing light around the sculpture to pass through them and alter their appearance. Rather than simply painting John's description of the heavens changing, I wanted the physical world surrounding the artwork to participate in it.
Light passes through the falling stars.
It changes them.
It brings them alive.
So while the other seals can be hidden when the gates close, the sixth remains visible.
There is something I particularly like about that distinction. By this point in Revelation, what is happening can no longer be contained within an individual image. The disturbance has reached the heavens themselves.
Even closing the gates cannot shut it away.
Holding Back the Four Winds
But before the seventh seal is opened, there is a pause.
This is where the story moves from the seals on the gates back into the central painting.
John sees four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds so that no wind can blow upon the earth, the sea or the trees.
I painted them into the central panel as part of the transition between the destruction of the sixth seal and what is still to come.
After all the violence and movement of the first six seals, I liked the idea of this sudden restraint.
The winds are being held back.
Something is being prevented from happening.
For a moment, the destruction is suspended.
But it isn't over.
The four angels are not the end of the story; they are almost a held breath within it — a moment when everything seems to wait.
Because the Lamb still has one final seal to open.
And when the seventh seal is broken, the vision changes again.
Seven angels stand before God.
And each is given a trumpet.
Chapter 6 — The Seven Trumpets
And then the Lamb opens the seventh seal.
For me, this is another turning point in the painting. The seals have released their visions, but Revelation now moves into something even more destructive.
Seven angels stand before God, and seven trumpets are given to them.
I wanted these angels to have an enormous presence.
I didn't want to paint the familiar image of a beautiful human figure with a pair of wings. These beings are not human, and I didn't see any reason why they should conform to our ideas of gender or even human anatomy.
My angels are deliberately androgynous.
Each has six wings, and their bodies have become almost sentinel-like — imposing guardians standing over what is happening below. I wanted them to feel powerful, commanding and slightly intimidating.
To me, they are extensions of God.
They carry His word, His command and His voice.
The Trumpets Are Their Voices
That idea changed the way I painted the trumpets.
I didn't want the angels simply holding musical instruments to their mouths.
Their mouths are the trumpets.
I elongated them into great projecting forms, almost like the bell of a brass instrument, because I imagined the voice travelling downwards from Heaven — amplified and echoing across everything beneath them.
When each angel sounds, it is therefore not merely the sound of an instrument.
It is a command.
And below these seven figures, the consequences of those commands begin to unfold across the painting.
Fire Cast Upon the Earth
Before the trumpets begin, another angel takes a golden censer, fills it with fire from the altar and casts it towards the earth.
I incorporated that moment into the painting amongst the turmoil below the angels.
Revelation describes voices, thunderings, lightning and an earthquake. Rather than trying to illustrate every element individually, I allowed the lightning to become one of the dominant signs of that sudden release of power.
Then the first angel sounds.
Hail and fire, mingled with blood, are cast upon the earth.
Across this part of the painting I filled the landscape with falling fire, smoke and destruction. Human figures appear amongst it, tiny compared with the forces being unleashed around them.
The scale is deliberate.
Humanity has become almost insignificant within the vision.
A Mountain Falls into the Sea
The second angel sounds and something described as a great mountain burning with fire is thrown into the sea.
I interpreted this through the volcanic imagery within the landscape.
Fire erupts against the darkness. Smoke gathers. The sea itself becomes part of the destruction and blood begins to flow through the scene.
I wasn't interested in creating seven neat little illustrations beneath seven angels.
I wanted everything to begin colliding.
One catastrophe runs into another.
Because that is how Revelation began to feel to me as I read it.
Wormwood
Then the third angel sounds.
A great star falls from Heaven, burning as it falls.
Its name is Wormwood.
You can find it streaking through the painting like a comet, descending into the chaos beneath the angels.
Again, it is one small detail within an enormous scene, but once you know what you are looking for, another part of John's vision reveals itself.
The Light Begins to Disappear
The fourth angel sounds and the heavens are struck.
Part of the sun is darkened.
Part of the moon.
Part of the stars.
Light itself begins to disappear.
I incorporated this into the central area beneath the seven angels alongside the fire, blood, smoke and destruction already taking place.
By this stage I made a conscious decision not to attempt to paint every single event literally.
Revelation repeatedly speaks of thirds of the earth, sea, rivers and heavens being destroyed or darkened. Had I tried to illustrate every sentence separately, the painting would have become a catalogue rather than a vision.
What mattered to me was the accumulation.
Fire.
Blood.
Smoke.
Darkness.
Falling stars.
Burning earth.
A world being overwhelmed beneath seven silent-looking sentinels whose voices have the power to change everything.
And then the fifth angel sounds.
This time, something answers from below.
A star falls to the earth, a key is given, and the bottomless pit is opened.
And from the darkness beneath John's vision, the smoke begins to rise.
Chapter 7 — The Bottomless Pit
The fifth angel sounds, and the direction of the vision changes.
Until now, destruction has largely been coming from above — fire, hail, a burning mountain, Wormwood and the darkening heavens.
Now something comes from below.
A star falls from Heaven to earth and is given the key to the bottomless pit.
The pit is opened.
And smoke pours out.
I painted that smoke rising through the centre of the painting, merging with the clouds, fire and destruction already filling the landscape. I wanted the boundaries between these events to begin disappearing. By this point there is so much happening that one vision almost consumes the next.
And from that smoke come the locusts.
The Locusts
These were never going to be ordinary insects.
Revelation describes creatures so bizarre that they almost demand to be imagined rather than simply copied: they have faces like men, hair like women, teeth like lions and tails like scorpions.
So I allowed them to become grotesque.
They emerge from the darkness as hybrid creatures — part human, part animal, part insect and completely unnatural.
I wanted them to be ugly.
Not ugly simply for the sake of horror, but because there should be something deeply uncomfortable about looking at a creature assembled from things that individually seem familiar but which should never exist together.
The scorpion tails are particularly important.
They turn these creatures into something capable not simply of frightening, but of inflicting pain.
And around them the painting becomes increasingly chaotic.
An Army from the Darkness
As the vision continues, mounted figures begin to appear.
I painted their riders as strange, almost faceless men, their individuality disappearing into the army they have become. Around them are the fiery breastplates, smoke and violence described as John's vision grows increasingly apocalyptic.
I wasn't trying to separate every verse into its own little illustration.
There is simply too much.
Revelation piles destruction upon destruction: fire, smoke, blood, armies, death and extraordinary numbers that become almost impossible to comprehend visually.
At some point I had to decide what mattered more — illustrating every sentence or capturing the feeling of what John was witnessing.
I chose the feeling.
The centre of the painting therefore becomes deliberately overwhelming.
The viewer shouldn't necessarily understand everything at first glance.
Neither, I imagine, could John.
The Sixth Trumpet
Then the sixth angel sounds.
Here Revelation speaks of four angels bound at the great river Euphrates being released.
These are not the same four angels I painted earlier holding back the four winds. Those appeared between the sixth and seventh seals.
The distinction matters because Revelation returns again and again to groups of angels performing very different roles.
With the sixth trumpet, restraint has gone.
The four bound angels are released and an immense army follows, bringing still more death and destruction.
Rather than attempting to give every number and every death its own image, I absorbed this into the wider catastrophe already spreading across the central panel.
By now, that is exactly what I wanted the painting to feel like.
Too much to take in at once.
Fire falls from above.
Smoke rises from below.
Creatures emerge from the pit.
Armies move through the landscape.
And humanity is caught somewhere in between.
But then, amongst all that darkness and destruction, another enormous figure appears.
He doesn't rise from the bottomless pit.
He comes down from Heaven.
Chapter 8: The Mighty Angel — Sweet as Honey, Bitter Within
Out of all the destruction, another figure descends.
I painted the mighty angel high on the left-hand side of the central panel, emerging through the clouds and towering over much of what is happening beneath him.
I wanted him to feel immense.
Like the seven trumpet angels, he is not a gentle, decorative figure. These angels are manifestations of something far more powerful. They carry authority, and their appearance needed to command the painting.
Revelation describes this angel as clothed with a cloud, with a rainbow upon his head, his face like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire.
I took those descriptions and made them physical.
His face is illuminated.
The rainbow appears around his head.
His legs descend like great pillars of fire.
And his mouth is opened impossibly wide.
A Voice Like Thunder
The mouth was particularly important to me.
When the mighty angel cries out, Revelation describes his voice as being like a lion roaring, followed by the voices of seven thunders.
I wanted the viewer to almost imagine that sound.
So I exaggerated the open mouth and placed lightning within it.
The lightning becomes the visual equivalent of the voice — something explosive coming from inside him.
It connects back to the way I treated the seven trumpet angels. Throughout this part of the painting, I was thinking about something that is impossible to paint:
sound.
How do you make a viewer hear something through an image?
For the trumpet angels, I turned their mouths into the instruments themselves.
For this angel, I turned his voice into lightning.
The Little Book
In his hand is the little book.
John is told to take it and eat it.
It will be sweet as honey in his mouth, but bitter in his belly.
This was one of those descriptions in Revelation that gave me an opportunity to play with the symbolism quite literally.
I placed honeycomb upon the book.
Honey drips from it, representing that first sweetness, but as it falls it changes. What begins as honey becomes something bitter — transforming into a twisted twig-like form.
Sweetness and bitterness exist within the same object.
For me, it reflects something much larger about Revelation itself.
There is promise within it.
There is salvation.
There is light.
But there is also judgement, suffering and destruction.
The same revelation can contain both.
Towards the Ark
Beyond the mighty angel, the sky begins to turn.
I painted the clouds almost as a great swirling passage drawing the eye deeper into the painting and towards a golden Ark in Heaven.
This begins another transition.
After the noise and violence below — the trumpets, the fire, Wormwood, the bottomless pit and the armies — the viewer's eye is pulled upwards again.
And standing within those clouds are two figures.
The two witnesses.
They lead us into the next part of John's vision.
Chapter 9: The Two Witnesses — At the Gateway to Heaven
The swirling sky leads towards the Ark in Heaven.
I painted the Ark in gold, sitting beyond the turmoil of the world below, with the clouds drawing the eye towards it almost like a gateway.
And guarding that gateway are the two witnesses.
I painted them clothed in sackcloth, as they are described in Revelation. Around them I incorporated the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, connecting them visually to the imagery that has already appeared elsewhere in the painting.
The candlesticks also take us back to the churches.
I wanted these recurring symbols to feel connected rather than isolated. Revelation constantly returns to images we have already encountered, but their meaning develops as John's vision progresses.
The witnesses stand within that strange space between the destruction below and the heavenly world beyond.
But even they are not safe.
The Beast from the Bottomless Pit
When the witnesses have completed their testimony, a beast rises from the bottomless pit and makes war against them.
This is another moment where the darkness we have already seen emerging from below returns to interfere with what is happening above.
By now, Heaven and Earth no longer feel like completely separate places within the painting.
Everything is beginning to collide.
The divine, the earthly and the monstrous occupy the same landscape.
And then the vision changes again.
A Great Wonder in Heaven
A woman appears.
She is clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head.
She is pregnant.
I wanted her to stand in extraordinary contrast to much of what surrounds her. After so much death and destruction, here is a figure carrying new life.
But that life is immediately under threat.
Behind her I painted the wilderness as a forest — the place towards which she will eventually flee.
And waiting for her is one of the most dominant creatures in this part of the painting.
The Great Red Dragon
The dragon is enormous.
He has seven heads, ten horns and seven crowns, and he waits for the woman to give birth.
There is something particularly disturbing about that image for me.
The woman represents vulnerability at its most extreme — pregnant, carrying something not yet able to defend itself — while the dragon waits to destroy what she brings into the world.
Once again, Revelation places completely opposing forces beside one another.
Birth and death.
Protection and destruction.
Heaven and the beast.
War in Heaven
And then there is war.
I painted this battle close to the great angel on the left of the composition.
The heavenly angels fight against the fallen angels, their bodies caught within the clouds and turmoil surrounding them.
I didn't want this to resemble an orderly battle scene. It belongs within the same visual chaos that has been steadily building throughout the painting.
The war is happening in Heaven itself.
Even this realm is no longer untouched by conflict.
The dragon is cast down.
But being cast down does not end his threat.
The Flood from the Serpent
The woman flees into the wilderness.
The dragon pursues her.
And from his mouth comes a flood.
I painted the water pouring directly from the serpent-like beast, another impossible image made physical within the landscape.
By this point, almost every element seems to have become a weapon.
Mouths produce trumpets.
A voice becomes lightning.
Heaven sends fire.
The pit releases smoke.
And now the serpent's mouth releases water.
Throughout the painting I kept returning to this idea of things coming from mouths — voice, command, worship, destruction. What emerges from these beings tells us something about what they are.
And here, the flood is intended to overwhelm.
Yet the woman escapes.
The End of the First Painting
And this is where I think we should stop.
Not because John's vision is finished.
Far from it.
But because this central painting is.
I had taken John's vision from the Son of Man and the seven churches, through the throne room and the Lamb, the breaking of the seals, the seven trumpet angels, the destruction of the earth, Wormwood, the opening of the bottomless pit, the mighty angel, the two witnesses and finally into the extraordinary vision of the woman and the dragon.
I couldn't paint every word.
Revelation is too vast for that.
Instead, I tried to capture its momentum — the feeling of one extraordinary vision arriving before the mind has fully absorbed the last.
That is why the centre of the painting becomes increasingly crowded and chaotic.
It is meant to overwhelm you.
Because I imagine John was overwhelmed too.
But this is only the end of the central panel.
The Book of Revelation continues.
And so does the artwork.
Beyond this painting are the gates, where John's vision becomes darker, stranger and increasingly dominated by the beasts, Babylon, judgement and what is still to come.
To continue, we have to open the gates.
This is so incredible. I discovered this recently and I've returned to admire it a number of times, it's genuinely so mind-blowing. Just wow!!!