Along my stairway hangs a drawing exercise by my late cousin, Bernice Isern. It shows the three Jersey cows from the farm where she grew up in Barton County, Kan. On the back she has inscribed their names: Rosie, Texas, and Lady. Various family members have paintings by Bernice, ranging from still lifes to wildlife to local landmarks. There is nothing in them of a restless or tormented soul.

In a gray box I keep a stack of pencil sketches that contrast starkly with all the other works. I reckon they were done in the 1930s. Family stories say they were Bernice’s preliminary sketches for a series of paintings based on the Revelation of John. The paintings, it is said, went to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod seminary in St. Louis.

I’m wondering what to make of these sketches. Those of us plains folk who adhere to the Lutheran tradition, with our sedate ways, generally have forgotten that our ancestors called themselves “evangelical.” They were part of a great religious revival among northern European Protestants in the mid-19th century that spilled its discontents across the Atlantic to America and thence to the open plains. These sketches, I see as they spill from the box, are a window into that evangelical ancestry.

It is a tradition that takes the “scripture alone” admonition to extremes, as with a literal reading of Revelation. Here is Bernice’s transcription of the Son of Man and the seven candlesticks, from Chapter 1, Verses 12-17. Like all the sketches, it is pencil-annotated to specific passages. Scrawled notes emanate from the head of the Son of Man: “white as wool & snow,” “eyes like fire,” “countenance as sun.” No artistic license here. The clear intent is to transcribe the text literally into image.

Yet it is, inevitably, a farm-girl prairie transcription. Many drawings are awkward. The horses, however, are elegant. In Bernice’s depiction of Revelation 19: 11-17, here is that holy judge with flaming eyes and bloody vesture, but all around him trails a gorgeous horse herd we can easily imagine sporting about a prairie pasture after a refreshing rain.

And look here at the seven-headed beast, based on Revelation 13. It’s obvious that Bernice, in the middle of Kansas, has a hard time imagining a beast of the sea. There is nothing amphibious about her beast. It has the requisite seven heads, which sure look like barn-cat heads, with the specified ten horns, a problem in symmetry. The heads adhere to a hog-like body with splayed porcine legs.

Compare this with the beast rendered by Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer, whose creature rises from the water with multiple snake-necks. Durer’s beast looks like something that should be dispatched by Sigourney Weaver with a flamethrower. Bernice’s beast looks like something that should be stuffed and placed into a county museum.

Something happened to that old-country evangelical fire when it made its home on the prairies. This place has a different spirit. God save us from that world of Durer. Give me the prairies.

I leave the reader now as I contemplate Bernice’s rendering of Revelation 4. I need hours to study this. The elders are casting down their crowns, the beasts are on parade, the Lamb is receiving the Book, every earthly creature joins the throng, and ten thousand times ten thousand angels are in full voice. What world is this? Whose vision? Are we in Kansas anymore?

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu