According to Brent

B rent Borup has always wanted to be an artist, but he doesn't want to paint just another pretty picture.  Brent wishes to share his testimony of Jesus Christ through his artwork. He hopes that his paintings will have a positive impact on other people's lives. Read, in the artist's own words, his thoughts and feelings about 16 of his inspirational portraits of Jesus Christ. "The Light of the World" For my whole life, the one painting that I wanted to create the most above anything else was a portrait of Jesus Christ. I worked on many different portraits of Christ through the years, but I was never quite satisfied with any of them until I painted "Light of the World". I have since based many paintings off of this one image. You may find it interesting that I painted this portrait during a very low point in my life. I had been really struggling to see any success as an artist, and after a few weeks of particularly trying circumstances, I was ver...

A lot has happened the past few months. First, I lost my job. To fill you in, I had been painting pictures full time for a publisher out of Boise. They decided to do some major restructuring, which meant some major downsizing, which means that I no longer have a steady source of income. That is a very scary thing for a husband and father, sole provider of my family. What is even scarier is what we have decided to do about it. Nothing. Well, not nothing, but not finding another job either. We decided to take this 'setback' as an opportunity, and pursue my dream of becoming a full time, self employed artist. My wife and I have wrestled with this decision for many months, and we still wrestle with the outcomes (or lack thereof) that we are seeing daily, because frankly, I'm not sure just how we are going to make it, but I'm sure we are ... Why? because this is what we felt we should do. I believe in prayer. I believe in personal revelation. I believe that God is mind...

Click Here to Share on Facebook I realized a while back that although I love my job , I wasn't entirely satisfied... I wanted more. I wanted to do more. I wanted to BE more. As I wrote in my very first blog post "Why I'm an artist" , I have always been able to see the big picture of my future life, just not all of the details that may get me there. One thing that I have always known for sure, is that I want to matter. I want to help people. I want to lift them up and make a difference in their lives. That is why I focus my artwork on two things: Pictures of Jesus Christ, and pictures of LDS Temples. I do this because I know that by focusing on those two things (which is really just one thing, the Temple is a tool that God uses to help us become more Christlike), our lives can become greater than we ever thought it could be. I knew that there were great things in store for me, I felt like I was just on the edge of something wonderful, but just what did I ne...

Click Here to Share on Facebook I must admit that I have been pretty stressed out lately.  A little background information: Most artists don’t survive on just their own art sales. Some do, it’s possible, but most don’t. Most artists I know figure out a way to make it work. For the past few years, I have been employed full time by a company based out of Boise, Idaho. I think that I have had it pretty good, I worked 40 hours a week painting pictures of LDS Temples for them. They paid me a steady paycheck. In return, they own the copyrights to the paintings that I created for them. Many of my artist friends thought that I was selling my soul, but no, just my copyrights. It worked out good for me... It kept my family fed, and kept me doing what I love. In the back of my mind, I knew that I needed to be working on some sort of exit strategy. I knew I needed a plan to be able to break out on my own so that I could grow in both my career and my income, but that was a bit in the...