Jacob on the Mountain has always been one of my favorite paintings.  Done fairly early in a recent series of work, it seems to embody a serenity and impenetrable mystery that is truly astonishing.  Jacob’s face is a mask of universality and wonder symbolic of every man.  In my novel, The Third Testament, from which the subject is directly drawn, Jacob finds himself in a messianic role for which he is not necessarily prepared.  As an epic struggle between good and evil builds, he walks out on a mountain where he is struck by a strange tranquility and rapture.  Messengers of a calling are present in the form of an insect and a red flower.  Jacob sits, and we are transported into his world of wholeness and unity by the painting