Painting by Numbers… and Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges …

Lisa Ferguson

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

It would just about take an act of God to convince Elayne LaPorta to paint anything besides ... well, an act of God.

The longtime Henderson resident has spent the last two decades turning biblical stories into works of art, which she's exhibited in galleries and religious art shows around the country.

She's parted "The Red Sea," visited "The Promised Land" and served up "The Last Supper," among others, in her mostly self-taught, "naive" style.

"It's just very childlike," explains LaPorta during a tour of the dozen or so original oil paintings and serigraphs that hang in her home.

They're an explosion of brilliant, crayon-like colors. Traditionally heroic-looking biblical figures, drawn in LaPorta's youthful fashion, seem almost cuddly.

Moses wears a magenta robe; his beard and hair look like fluffy cotton balls. Even the doomed Egyptians -- about to be swallowed by lapping, blood-red waves -- are cute.

"As sad as some of the subjects are, you can really smile," LaPorta says. "Nobody said God didn't have a sense of humor."

Steve Lesnick, a local art teacher who taught La Porta in the '70s, says that despite its simple appearance, LaPorta's style is actually very sophisticated.

"A naive painter is some one like Grandma Moses, who couldn't draw well," he says. "(LaPorta) can draw as realistic as you can get."

Lesnick says he once told her, "You want to revert back to when you were 6 and 7 years old."

"When she developed that style, it was primitive." Nowadays, "Modern primitive is what I call it because there are a lot of abstract shapes in there."

Bible archaeologist

Despite her subjects, putting paintbrush to canvas has hardly been a religious experience for LaPorta, who studied Bible archaeology for 25 years.

On the advice of Calvin Goodman, a Los Angeles art marketer, she decided to put her knowledge to use.

"He said, 'If you have a background in Bible archaeology, I think that you should start doing it in this style,'" LaPorta recalls. "I said, 'Where do I start?' He said, 'You can start in the beginning if you want.'"

But LaPorta's expertise was in the New Testament, not the Old. So once a week, she and Goodman had a "telephone appointment. I would read and he would interpret.

"It's history, and history (in general) has always been my thing," she says. "These aren't fairy tales, these are true stories and they're wonderful."

But the trick, she contends, rests in the interpretation.

"We have so many different religions, and people are offended if you come out with your own idea," she says. That's why she sticks with the stories in the King James Version of the Bible. "It seems to be the safest."

LaPorta is a stickler for accuracy, and she has collected countless Bible reference books that she uses to double-check her facts.

Usually. She ran into trouble several years ago while painting "The First Miracle," the story of Jesus changing water into wine.

When LaPorta took it to a local priest for approval, he pointed out that she had included one too many ornate water jugs in the scene.

"That's what happens when you think you know it all and you don't have to check facts," she says. "This is one of the first stories that I ever knew.

"I was so upset. (The priest) said, 'You know what to do? Crack one of the jugs. (The ancient people) would never have used it.'"

"There is a story to every one" of the paintings, she says. And not all of them are Bible standards.

"The Lord Is My Shepherd" shows Christ standing between a pair of heart-shaped trees as a peculiar blue butterfly looks on.

It was inspired by a story told by nun whom LaPorta had gone to hear speak.

The sister had visited a mission in Mexico. "She said to one of the missionaries, 'If the blessed mother comes to visit me, I will never know it.' And he said, 'You will, because she'll be in the form of a blue butterfly,'" LaPorta says.

"Maybe a year later, when she had gone back to her convent, one of the nuns came in and said, 'Sister, you ought to see what's in the garden. There's a butterfly, but it's blue.' She said she ran out and there it was."

Better to give

It wasn't divine intervention, though, that turned LaPorta's attention from biblical times to the future two years ago, when she created a moving, modern-day piece for Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada.

A favor for a friend was all it took.

LaPorta produced "Our Lady of the Streets" at the request of Tom Miller, the organization's former executive director.

"It was my idea to have her do something that would be appropriate to the agency, that we could use as an award for people who donate" to Catholic Charities.

The result was a crowded holiday street scene, drawn in her trademark style, where homeless men, women and children huddle around garbage-can fires and under tattered blankets outside St. Vincent shelter in Las Vegas.

"Isn't that a fun piece?" LaPorta asks.

Ummmm ...

Miller prefers to call it "a pretty good graphic summary" of the typical goings-on about the shelter.

"Every time you look at it, you see something additional that you didn't notice the first time, whether it's the animals or the 'Las Vegas Transit' on the side of the bus."

Pretty good for someone who hasn't visited the shelter in years. "(Lou and I) go to San Francisco quite often," La Porta says, "and you see a lot of these sights up there, (so) I just about knew what was going on."

Lithographs of "Our Lady of the Streets" have been distributed to countless donors. One also hangs in Catholic Charities national office in Washington, D.C.

LaPorta is already cultivating ideas for another portrait for the organization -- one of St. Vincent himself.

"I have a picture of his original home and an old tape of how he used to visit the sick," she says. "It's very hard to do someone like that, to put them on canvas (in a way) that would be interesting."