In the beginning, there was Genesis.
Genesis tells the universal story of creation. It is the cornerstone of monotheistic faith, and the bedrock of the People of the Book. It is also the first book I created in my 15-year journey to illuminate the entire Pentateuch.

The stories of Genesis stand on their own as tales of love, jealousy, anger, the manifestations of God and his angels, and the complex relationship between them and humankind. But it is only when reading the books that come after it that one recognizes the true value of Genesis in establishing the foundational narrative of all that follows.

For visual inspiration to depict these complex themes, I turned to art from the Mediterranean Basin, Mesopotamia and the culture of the Egyptian Nile– the cultures surrounding the Hebrews at the time of Genesis. Nodding to these ancient images of deities, kings and queens, goddesses of fertility and humans, I developed what would grow into an entire visual language, a concordance of images providing a unique visual interpretation of the text of Genesis and eventually the Complete Illuminated Bible.