Manuel Nunez

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

These lines, lush with romantic imagery, could appear in any volume of poetry. They are, in fact, a selection from the Bible's Song of Solomon. The songs are heady, their sensual phrases steeped with the smells of cinnamon and myrrh, while honeyed tongues and scarlet lips put forth comely speech.

But that's not why artist Manuel Nunez selected them to complement his piece, "Arise My Love." To him, the words represented God's love, and his painting is an allegory.

All of Nunez's work tries to convey a religious lesson. Each painting depicts beautiful, ethereal women draped in gauzy robes. Rather than seducing with their feminine allure, however, the painting's subjects are intended to celebrate virtue, passion for the Lord and the struggle to overcome the trials of the physical world in pursuit of the rewards of the spiritual.

The metaphor in Nunez's own life is hard to miss. From his start as a fashion illustrator and through his hesitant first forays into the world of fine art, he has struggled to find a way to meld his religious beliefs with his artistic talents. It has been a difficult search at times, but one that he feels is finally yielding fruitful results.

The 47-year-old Nunez has always pursued art as a career to support himself and his family. "It was really the only choice I had," he said from his home in San Pedro, Calif. "I was always a really bad student. I'm dyslexic, so I really didn't have too many choices. Art was the only thing I could fall back on."

It wasn't the direction he wanted to head, however. His father, a talented musician who had written hundreds of songs and recorded nine Spanish-language albums during the 1950s, had never been financially successful at his vocation. "My only concept of an artist was as a starving artist" Nunez said. "I never thought of an artist as being successful...I listen to his music all of the time, but it's only now that I really appreciate his music and what he was doing with it." It could be said that in this atmosphere, the spirituality which shaped his creativity was upon the artist from his first breath.

In high school a teacher introduced to him the concept of commercial art, and an education at The Art Center College of Design, then in Pasadena, Calif., started him in a career as a commercial artist. He created fashion illustrations for ads, as well as album covers and some movie posters. The work was lucrative, until it started drying up in the late '80s when the economy crashed.

About the same time, Nunez was finding himself drawn in a different direction. He and his wife decided that he should pursue his potential as a fine-art painter. "At that time we had three small children, so it was definitely a tightrope without a net;' he said. "We sold our house, and that was the money that we had to survive on while I developed my body of work:'

Nunez did just that for about a year. He started shopping his artwork around at various galleries, lugging the pieces out of his van, but was disappointed when gallery owners wouldn't grant him an audience.

By 1992, the Nunez family had hit rock bottom, in debt and living off of their credit cards. Nunez had decided to give up his fine-art dream and had scheduled an interview for an illustration position with Disney. An artist friend of his, however, offered Nunez one last shot. Robert Blue had convinced his publisher, Ralph Gorton, the owner of Summit Publishing in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to meet with Nunez.

"I thought, 'this is it," said Nunez. "We had dinner, and he wanted to sign me up.... He took all the work I had in my van, maybe seven pieces. My wife and I were completely ecstatic. We freaked out." By the next day, Nunez found a message on his answering machine: Almost everything had already sold, and Gorton was asking for more.

From that point on, Nunez said, his career has taken off. He now has limited editions produced by Summit Publishing, and his originals are offered by nearly 15 galleries.

He's also been able to develop his style away from its illustrative, commercial-driven roots. "Obviously, my first work was very, very influenced by fashion;' he said. "In the beginning, I couldn't be more off, as far as the way [women were] depicted. I was completely, completely off." Nunez said that he regretted doing one piece so much that he purchased the remaining prints from his publisher to pull them out of circulation.

As painful as his early efforts were to him, Nunez said, it was a learning experience. "[My style] has really evolved a lot, thank God. You can really see a clear transition, from beginning until now. It's gotten a lot more innocent...pure."

Ideas for his paintings start with his gathering different visuals from magazines, photographs and books. (He said he usually pairs his paintings up with an appropriate Biblical verse later in the process.) As the scene takes form, Nunez will incorporate patterns from fabrics into his preliminary sketches. He makes all the costumes for his models, including the elaborate armor and leather doublets some of the women in his images sport. "For one, I just went to Home Depot and bought sheet metal, rivets and screws, and bolts and nuts" he said. "I used an anvil and a hammer and ball peen. For another, I just went to the Army surplus store and bought leather things--spats and an old saddle bag." Once his props and scene are set, he uses acrylics to paint his images; he finishes the pieces with hand-applied, 23-karat gold leaf.

Although he's happy with where he's come as an artist, Nunez said that he definitely sees change in the future. He's incorporating more landscapes into his work, and said he wants to broaden the base of what he does. He also admitted that he needs to take some workshops to learn to paint more efficiently.

Whatever direction his career takes, he said that his skill and faith will pull him through. He admitted that he wouldn't be where he is today without both; nor would he have been able to succeed without the help of his wife, who poses as the model for many of his images.

"My wife has been the most important thing in my whole career - financially, emotionally and in every way," Nunez said. "We have bags of pictures - boxes of pictures - of kids hanging on to her skirt; her eight months pregnant, wearing a designer outfit from New York that I have to draw her slender in for an ad...those were good times. We've been through it all. Without her I'd be nothing."