As the Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church celebrates its 50th year, the church has tasked longtime Fountain Hills resident and FHPC church member Jackie Miles with compiling and analyzing five decades of church artifacts and historical items.
Miles recently came across an article sent to the Arizona Republic dated May 22, 1976 - two years after the church’s first Sunday Service - describing a gift to the church from Prescott Artist Earl MacPherson.
The article describes an artistic portrait of Jesus of Nazareth that has hung in the Presbyterian sanctuary for decades.
The portrait was completed on a smooth, diamond-shaped sedimentary sandstone called Arizona Flagstone, a medium MacPherson chose because it allowed the painting to come out in layers.
Drawing from an artistic technique that dates back 200 centuries, MacPherson used charcoal, Italian crayon and Conte crayons to create the portrait.
According to Miles, this piece was MacPherson’s 97th “Christone.”
“He was hoping to make a hundred of them,” Miles said, adding that MacPherson also painted a similar portrait for the Ascension Lutheran Church just down the road in Paradise Valley, commissioned by then-pastor Rev. Conrad Braaten.
MacPherson’s painting at the Ascension Lutheran Church in Paradise Valley was presented by Green Acres Memorial Gardens in 1969 and also hangs in the church sanctuary.
Interpretation of Christ
MacPherson’s interpretation of Jesus included a bearded man with blue eyes and hints of red hair peeking out from underneath a white cloak.
According to Miles, this interpretation of Christ matches a description recorded by a clerk of Pontious Pilate in the Archeko Volumes as well as a description recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“The reddish hair and the blue eyes are so different from what portraits of Christ had been throughout the ages,” Miles said.
All with the same interpretation of Christ, these portraits are exhibited in churches throughout Arizona and California.
Now celebrating its 50th year, Miles invites the Presbyterian congregants and the rest of the community to view the painting in the sanctuary and find solace in the face of Jesus of Nazareth.
To view the painting, visit the Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church at 13001 N. Fountain Hills Blvd.
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