"Moses and the Burning Bush"

12 x 16 inches, acrylic on canvas panel, 2021.

I have long been fascinated by the bible story of Moses and the Burning Bush. I've wanted to paint it, but it took me a while to figure out how. In this painting, I started with a technique called "decalcomania", giving me an abstract texture on the canvas. Looking at it, I could start to see various things-- faces, figures, birds, animals, and more, which I then rendered more clearly. In the center, I added the 'all-seeing eye', the 'Eye of Providence', the eye of God, and the figure of Moses was added as well.

As with many of the stories in the Old Testament of the Bible, we often may wonder if the stories are literal, symbolic, or something else. If God actually presented himself to Moses as a burning bush, what would it have looked like? How would Moses have perceived it? One might speculate that he may have seen something more, but a 'burning bush' was the only way for him to describe it.

Another interesting notion-- suggested by Benny Shanon, an Israeli professor of cognitive philosophy, is that perhaps Moses had ingested some kind of psychoactive plant that caused him to have a deep and profound hallucination.

Whatever the case may be-- including the possibility that this is nothing more than a myth-- I find this story (and many others in the Bible) to be fascinating, and I just had to paint it.