Artist: Painting's Characters Have Stories to Tell

Eighty-three-year old Muriel Linton apologizes on the telephone - "I'm sorry," she says, "but this cold gives me an old lady voice" - before launching into her story.

A resident of Bethany Covenant Village for the last 10 years, Linton is bursting to tell someone about her painting called He Leadeth Me.

For more than 30 years, Linton taught painting and won several awards, but only once did she tackle a sacred subject - Jesus walking on the road to Jerusalem. In her painting, Jesus is accompanied on the road by a dozen figures from all walks of life: several children, an older man, a queen, and a soldier with bowed head.

Each of them has a story to tell, says Linton, who for years did presentations based on the painting. She recently did a presentation at Bethany Covenant Village, with a digital version of the picture displayed on a wall, describing the story of each character. She hopes to do more presentations in the future.

"I am eighty-three, but that doesn't matter," she says. "I feel l can really serve the Lord through the message of this painting."

Linton has always been a performer at heart - she once had a ventriloquist act featuring "Candy the talking doll" and for a time had her own radio show. In recent years, Linton has taken up writing, publishing six books. The latest is called, Tackling a Leopard Single-handed in Africa and Other True Stories. The title is based on an incident she learned about while serving a short-term mission in Africa while in her twenties. According to Linton, a missionary she knew once saved a government official from certain death by taking on a leopard single-handed.

"As crazy as it sounds," she says, "it's a true story."

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