Still Trying to Get It Right: The Story of Del Parson, A Lifetime of Striving, & The Famous Portrait He Almost Tossed In The Fire
The trailer sat on a patch of hard ground in eastern Idaho, and inside it, Del Parson was thinking about leaving. He was nineteen, maybe twenty, pounding fence posts into solid sandstone for a boss who wouldn’t even let him keep his own car keys. His boss knew what the keys meant: freedom to quit. And he wasn’t taking any chances.
At night, there wasn’t much to do. No television. No radio. Just a stack of Reader’s Digest and a Bible. So Del picked up the Bible, and once he started reading, he didn’t stop. He read it cover to cover.
Somewhere in those pages, between the fenceposts and the silence, he had a sacred experience that changed the course of his life. As he read, he felt a desire to turn his life over to God. He’d been what he calls “a juvenile delinquent” up to that point. He didn’t know it yet, but the time spent in that trailer reading a borrowed Bible would become the foundation for a life spent trying to paint the face of the person he was reading about.
Del Parson is seventy-seven now. He’s been teaching at Dixie State University for thirty-seven years, still painting, still striving to get the face right. His work has influenced the lives of millions of people throughout the world. (The artwork, not the fence posts.)
But the road from that trailer to impactful artist wasn’t easy. It involved thirteen years of not eating if he didn’t sell a painting. A father-in-law showing up at Christmas, opening an empty fridge, and asking if he’d ever thought about getting a job. Months of work on a painting he almost threw into a wood-burning stove because it wasn’t good enough. And through all of it, the decision he made in that trailer —partner with God and let Him be part of your life— carried him through. Del’s experience building a life and paving his way as a creator holds lessons any creative, entrepreneur, or builder can learn from.
The Roadmap
He didn’t grow up planning to be an artist. His dad was a painter, but Del thought he’d end up doing something outdoors, maybe a forest ranger. Then his dad suggested he take a drawing class when he got into BYU, and Del found he liked it. (He was better at it than he was at English, so he kept taking classes.)
But liking something and building a life around it are different questions, and Del didn’t know how to answer the second one.
He met a girl he wanted to marry. He was excited about art, but also worried about survival. How could a starving artist support a family?
Then he heard about something his church offered called a patriarchal blessing. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a patriarchal blessing is a personal spiritual roadmap, given by a church patriarch, meant to offer guidance and direction for one’s life. These blessings are recorded in print and can be referred back to at any time.
Del had grown up going to church, but he’d been rebellious enough that he’d never pursued one of these blessings. He remembers thinking to himself, If anybody needs help from God, I need help.
He received the blessing, from a man he had never met before, and it talked about art. It said art would be a joy to him in his life, that it would be an asset to influence many lives for good, that he would teach the ways of the Lord to many. “It answered almost every question I could imagine,” Del told Desert Founders.
He asked the girl to marry him. They got married, and he became a a full-time artist. The blessing wasn’t a guarantee of success, but he felt it was a green light to pursue his passion. Everything he’s accomplished and done since then has been in response to the answers he feels he received in that blessing.
When Loss Became Clarity
Years into the marriage, in 1978, Del’s wife and daughter were killed in a car accident.
When he talks about it now, his reflection upon what the experience did to him may be different than what most would expect.
“I look back on that and… I think someday I’m going to really thank God for that,” he told Desert Founders. “I feel like I really got close to God from it. I felt like the Holy Ghost visited me, and I wanted to paint that kind of feeling.”
It’s a difficult thing to hear someone say they’re grateful for tragedy. But Del isn’t talking about the loss itself. He’s talking about what came after. The closeness to God he found in the loss of his companion. The clarity of purpose that emerged from the pain.
Setback and hardship can do that. They can strip away everything that doesn’t matter and leave you standing in front of what does. They can change what you’re building and your understanding of why you’re building it.
He remarried a few years later and kept painting.
The Commission
In 1983, not long after he remarried, Del was commissioned by the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to paint his first portrait of Christ.
The commission paid a total of seven hundred dollars, plus a three hundred dollar bonus. At the time, Del was selling paintings in galleries for twenty-one hundred to thirty-five hundred dollars. This commission would take months to complete. There would be sketches, revisions, back-and-forth with reviewers, approval from senior church leaders at every stage before he could even start painting.
He said yes anyway. And looking back, it was one of the most wonderful experiences of his life.
“It definitely didn’t have anything to do with money,” Del said. “In fact, it was a real sacrifice doing it.”
He worked on that commission, later known as Jesus the Christ, for months. But there was one particular stretch of nine days when he prayed as hard as he could and painted with everything he had.
At the end of those nine days, he stepped back looked at the painting, and knew that he had failed.
He wanted to toss it in the fire. There was a wood-burning stove in his home, and Del was ready to throw it in and start over.
“I was so discouraged and so upset about it,” Del told Desert Founders.
Most of us know that feeling. The tiny, persistent voice that says it’s not good enough. The gap between what you imagined and what you made. Del felt all of that staring at that painting.
He told his wife, Lynette, that he was going to burn it and start over. She didn’t let him near the flame. “The church hasn’t even seen it,” she told him. So they took the painting, packed it up, and mailed it off.
It came back with notes. Do a couple of things. Fix this, adjust that. He made the changes and sent it again. This time, the committee—which included members of the church’s highest level of leadership—approved it.
Sometimes the work you’re ready to burn is exactly what the world needs. Jesus the Christ has now inspired millions around the world and become one of the most recognized depictions of Christ ever created.
Thirteen Years of Living Painting to Painting
For thirteen years, Del and his family lived off his paintings. If he didn’t sell one, they didn’t eat. That was their total income.
“I’d wake up Monday morning, go to my studio, and paint until Saturday night,” he told Desert Founders. “You’re just a hermit. You’re a total hermit.”
A couple of years in, his father-in-law came over at Christmas and opened the fridge. There was no food. He looked at Del and said, “Have you ever thought about getting a job?”
“That was brutal,” he told Desert Founders.
But he didn’t go get a job. He kept painting. He told his father-in-law no. This was his dream, and he was chasing it. He sold Western landscapes, cowboys and wide-open spaces, the kind of work that moved in galleries. He was making decent money eventually, enough that he could support his family without the daily panic. He wasn’t rich, but he was making it.
In 1988, Del started teaching at Dixie College now Utah Tech University. He didn’t really like being a total hermit, and teaching gave him a way to keep creating while also connecting with people. But it was more than that. He’d spent thirteen years chasing the dream of being a painter, living on the edge of whether it would work. Now he was teaching other people how to do it. He’d turned his passion into something that could sustain his family and still let him paint every day. He’s been teaching at Dixie State for thirty-seven years now, still creating, living the dream he told his father-in-law he wouldn’t give up on.
Teaching What Matters
Not all of his students will become full-time artists. Most won’t. But Del doesn’t measure success that way. He teaches them that art does more than pay bills. It teaches discipline. It teaches you to keep working when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for yet.
He’s also teaching them to be authentically themselves. He talks about God in class. He paints Christ during demos. He brings his religious paintings in and talks about them openly.
In thirty-seven years, he’s never had a formal complaint.
“I don’t think they think I’m there trying to push religion on them,” he said. “I think they realize I’m there doing my best to help them.”
He’s not performing a version of himself that fits some professional standard. He’s not editing out the parts of him others may disagree with. He’s just being himself, and himself includes being an open follower of Jesus Christ.
That’s the lesson for anyone building something that matters. Be true to yourself, whatever your belief system. Honor the voice inside you, the goodness you carry, the convictions that shape how you see the world. It goes against everything artistic and creative to try to paint a picture of something you aren’t. Don’t pretend. Don’t perform. Don’t create for other people. Just be genuinely yourself.
Del is a believer. That’s influences everything he does in life. So that’s who he brings into the classroom, and that’s who shows up in his work.
What He’d Tell You
Del Parson has one piece of advice for artists, entrepreneurs, builders, his grandchildren, and anyone who will listen.
“Turn your life over to God,” he told Desert Founders.
It’s what he decided in that trailer in eastern Idaho fifty-eight years ago. It’s what carried him through the loss of his wife and daughter. Through thirteen years of living painting to painting, through his father-in-law’s question at Christmas, through the painting he almost burned. Through everything.
“I look at my life and I go, wow,” he told Desert Founders. “Pretty amazing.”
Del Parson’s story isn’t about religion. It’s about partnership. It’s about trusting something bigger than yourself when you’re pounding fence posts into sandstone and don’t know what comes next. It’s about saying yes to the work that matters even when it pays seven hundred dollars instead of three thousand. It’s about letting your wife save the painting you’re ready to destroy. It’s about doing your best, adding your value, and trusting that your best is enough.
If you’re building something, if you’re creating something, if you’re chasing a dream that doesn’t make sense to anyone else, the lesson is simple: be yourself. Don’t perform or pretend. Don’t wait for perfect. Do your best, trust the partnership, and let the work go into the world.
Del is seventy-seven now, and he’s still painting. Still teaching. Still chasing the dream he told his father-in-law he wouldn’t give up on.
Still trying to get the face right.
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