Beyond the Brush: Akiane Kramarik on The Relic
Some paintings carry their stories on the canvas. The Relic carries its story in what happened after the paint dried. In this episode of Beyond the Brush, Akiane Kramarik shares why she felt compelled to place a boat in the middle of a desert, how the finished painting disappeared into storage and could not be found for years, and the moment it reappeared in plain view in the very first crate. Then came the visitors who made the title feel less like a name and more like a prophecy: archaeologists who looked at the landscape and recognized it from their own research in the Middle East. Watch the video below, then read the full story in Akiane’s own words.
“This is something way beyond a paintbrush and an artist. This is something that I think God really, really wanted me to paint.”
— Akiane Kramarik
About This Video
Beyond the Brush is a video series in which Akiane Kramarik shares the stories behind her paintings in her own words. In this episode, she reflects on The Relic, a work whose title proved strangely fitting. After the family placed the original in storage, the painting went missing for years, only to be found later sitting in the first crate they opened, in plain view. When the family gallery reopened, visiting archaeologists told Akiane the painted landscape closely matched a desert site in the Middle East connected to their research on Noah’s flood, and a second archaeologist later shared photographs of nearly identical terrain. For Akiane, the story points beyond technique or imagination to the conviction that this was a painting God wanted her to paint.
Video Transcript
Beyond the Brush: Akiane Kramarik on The Relic Video Transcript
This painting is called The Relic, and it just so happened that when I titled this painting, I did not expect that it would actually become a lost relic in a matter of a few years. There was a reason why I had to put the boat in the middle of this desert. And if you look really closely, there might be a tad bit of paint strokes far in the background. I wanted to make the dunes higher and also have a background of snow in the distance, but I decided to lower the dunes and just keep it as is.
When I finished the painting and I named it The Relic, I was confident that I was going to put it on display or have it in an art show. Then we had personal adventures, and we had to put this original in storage. We used to have an 8,000 square foot gallery in our home, so I was confident we were going to come back and put all the paintings back on the wall.
Me and my dad came back to America, and we could not find it. We could not find this painting for years, and we were baffled. Where did it go? We opened every single box. There was only one place we would have put it, and it was just missing. Little did we know, it is still a mystery today how it happened.
Some time passed. We went back into the same place and we opened everything, and there it was, straight in our view, in the first box, the first crate. We were still baffled at how it came about. We had checked everywhere, and for years it was like, how did this happen? My mom and my dad were saying, wow, you actually called this title into existence, in a way.
When the gallery was finally reopened, we loved inviting people. We loved having tours. At some point we had almost, I think it was 500 to 600 people in one place, and it was such an incredible experience. And there were these archaeologists who came, and they were staring at this painting, and they asked, why did you paint that boat? And I said, I just have this feeling that it was meant to be there. I do not know the exact reason why, but sometimes that happens. I paint something, and I have no idea.
They looked at it really intensely, and they said it looked like an almost identical replica of a landscape they had discovered in the Middle East, in a desert where they were gathering information and researching Noah’s flood. They were enlightening us with all the research they were doing, and that was just one story. Then another time, another archaeologist came and told another version of something they found exactly like the scenery, and they showed us pictures of the exact landscape. The hills and the dunes were the same. The cactuses and everything were so close.
Sometimes I have to sit back and wonder. This is something that is way beyond a paintbrush and an artist. This is something way beyond my control and my vision, my imagination, my love of art. This is something that I think God really, really wanted me to paint.