The Unseen Order - Four Panels of Moral Storytelling
The Unseen Order didn’t arrive all at once. It grew — slowly, strangely — across four panels, each one tugging at moral ideals, scripture, fables, and whatever symbols kept surfacing while I worked. Seventy hours per piece, sometimes more. Colored pencil dust everywhere. Metallic gold catching the light when I didn’t expect it. Ink settling into the paper like it had something to say.
And the imagery… it wandered. A stag leaping before I even knew why. Lions showing up with their own agendas. A viper wearing a crown (because of course he would). Old stories — Genesis, Isaiah, Aesop — threading themselves through modern tension without asking permission. My yellow bird kept flying in and out. Coco, too, in her quiet cameo. These things happen when you draw long enough; symbols start talking to each other.
Each panel became its own little world. One about choices and the strange clarity that comes after confusion. One about vigilance, danger hiding in the tall grass. One about strength and the tiny creatures that stand beside it anyway. One about desire, and how wanting “more” can turn thorny fast.
But together — all four — they feel like a meditation on the unseen forces that shape us. The stories we inherit without noticing. The warnings we pretend aren’t for us. And the small, stubborn ways light keeps slipping in through the cracks.
Panel I - Decisions, Discernment, and the Divine
Mixed Media: Colored Pencil, Metallic Gold & Silver, Posca, and Ink 2026
16×20 (matted and framed)
A meditation on choice, consequence, and the quiet ways God guides us.
This panel grew from Genesis and Isaiah 5:20, unfolding across a layered landscape of symbols. A stag leaps across the page — a creature caught mid‑decision — while the Garden of Eden blooms beneath him. Adam and Eve stand among the creatures, including a small cameo of my late rabbit, Coco, tucked gently into the scene.
In the lower corners, two clouds speak to the tension of moral discernment: one crackling with flame and lightning, invoking harsh judgment; the other extending a pointed hand, a gesture toward God’s direction for our lives.
A small yellow bird rests at the bottom — a personal symbol of hope, guidance, and the soft nudge toward what is good.
The entire piece is framed in an art‑deco halo of watching eyes, echoing the angels. Above Eden, stained‑glass arches rise like a cathedral window.
At the top, Christ stands at the center, the earth in His hands. From it radiates a rainbow — the covenant made with creation. To the right, the Tree of Wisdom bends as Eve plucks its fruit. To the left, a curling cursive D hints at the title, with a viper coiled beneath it.
A piece about the choices we make, the voices we listen to, and the divine thread that still pulls us toward the light.
Panel II - The One Eyed Doe
Mixed Media: Colored Pencil, Metallic Gold & Silver, Posca, and Ink 2026
16×20 (matted and framed)
Inspired by Aesop’s fable The One‑Eyed Doe, this panel explores vulnerability, vigilance, and the fragile systems we trust to keep us safe.
At the bottom of the piece, a doe leaps across a meadow — her movement full of grace, yet pierced by an arrow. Blood falls from the wound onto a single cosmos flower below, a reminder of how quickly innocence can be disrupted. The meadow around her blooms with yellow, blue, and pink flowers, lush grass, and gentle color — a symbolic “safety net” we build for ourselves, sometimes unaware of its limits.
In the lower right corner, a large eye sheds tears as a line of ants climbs across the lid toward the wounded doe. At the center bottom, a single ant stands alone — a nod to returning to the earth, to collective responsibility, to the hive‑mind instinct that binds communities together.
On the left, an anchor rests quietly in the grass while deer graze nearby, unaware of the danger unfolding among them. Above the meadow, the scene shifts sharply: abstract waves churn with narwhals weaving in and out, and a submarine periscope rises from beneath the surface.
Crashing through the waves is a military ship flying the American military flag as the American civil flag slips into the sea. Across its hull stretches the fable’s warning: “Guard Well the Strong Places.” In the upper right corner, a fighter jet streaks across the sky, missiles visible — a stark symbol of the tense political atmosphere shaping our world today.
A piece about vigilance, community, and the unseen threats that move beneath the surface — urging us to protect what matters before it’s too late.
Panel III - The Kingdom of the Lion
Mixed Media: Colored Pencil, Metallic Gold & Silver, Posca, and Ink 2026
16×20 (matted and framed)
Rooted in the Book of Enoch, 1 Peter 5:8, and Aesop’s fable The Kingdom of the Lion, this panel explores strength, vigilance, and the fragile dance between power and vulnerability.
Four lions command the composition. In the bottom right, a lion roars — crowned in a gold halo, a symbol of authority and divine ferocity. At the center, a lioness meets the viewer’s gaze directly, steady and unflinching, a sentinel on the prowl. In the top right, another lioness crouches low, ready to strike — her body coiled with intention. The final lioness burns with a fiery tail, encircled in gold, beside Aesop’s words: “Oh how I have longed to see this day in which the weak shall take their place without fear by the side of the strong.”
Yet fear still lingers. In the bottom left corner, a small mouse stands among the mighty — a quiet symbol of innocence — while the crouched lioness above seems poised to devour it. The tension between protection and predation hums through the scene.
At the center of the piece, four portals open like ancient gates: the sun, the moon, thunder and lightning, and the wind — elemental forces drawn from Enoch, each one a threshold between the earthly and the divine.
Beneath the crouched lioness lies a scroll unfurled with the warning from 1 Peter 5:8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
The entire composition is wrapped in a jester‑like lattice of silver and blue — a pattern that hints at folly, spectacle, and the strange theater of power.
A piece about strength, temptation, vigilance, and the eternal question of who is truly safe in the kingdom of the lion.
Panel IV - They Call Him the Viper King
Mixed Media: Colored Pencil, Metallic Gold & Silver, and Ink 2026
16×20 (matted and framed)
Inspired by Aesop’s fable The Frogs Desiring a King, this panel examines desire, danger, and the seductive pull of false authority.
At the center of the piece, the moral of the fable unfurls in soft cursive: “Let Well Enough Alone.” The words are encircled by thorny blackberry branches — beautiful at first glance, yet sharp enough to wound. They serve as a reminder that what glitters with promise can just as easily conceal harm.
In the upper right corner, a bright yellow eyelash pit viper coils with quiet menace, a jewel‑encrusted crown perched atop its head. Regal, radiant, and deadly, the crowned viper embodies the peril of choosing a ruler for spectacle rather than wisdom.
Below, two frogs — a red‑headed poison frog and a northern leopard frog — gaze upward toward their new “king.” Their posture is hopeful, almost reverent, yet the truth hums beneath the surface: the viper’s reign will end in their undoing. What appears orderly and peaceful is only a momentary illusion.
The entire scene rests against a velvety purple backdrop, rich and ceremonial, overlaid with ornate gold latticework. Blue and silver bursts frame the edges, adding a sense of grandeur that contrasts sharply with the quiet threat at the center.
A piece about longing, misplaced trust, and the danger of asking for more when what we have is already enough.