A contemporary William Blake

Several months ago, I had traveled to Oxford to visit an artist, Donald Pass, and hear his remarkable story. A native of England, he has had a dramatic career as a fine artist for sixty years. Educated at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he was a successful painter of portraits and religious works, but was best known for his landscapes, especially for the lyrical abstracts of his native countryside. Yet, in 1969 that all changed. While we sat in his living room, Donald recounted the vision he had forty years ago, which has since been his sole subject as an artist. In 1969, he had gone to sketch at a churchyard in Cuckfield, a small town in Sussex. There he saw what he calls now the Vision of the Resurrection. He explains that he calls it a "vision" for the lack of a better word. "It was really like a veil had been lifted. I was so aware of it going on and yet it was as if I wasn’t there, as if I was watching a film."

What he gradually saw was a monumental scene - of angels, human figures, a landscape that stretched to infinity, and an event outside the domain of time. "There were all sorts of angels," he tells me "of all different sizes." Human figures were rising in columns and gathered in by angels; others moved towards very dark and still angels standing near the horizon.

"At one point there was this enormous angel' Donald remembers, "who descended with his arms outstretched accompanied by a tremendous chorus of sound." In paintings, he appears under the title of "Archangel Gabriel" - a huge, grave, and sobering presence. Donald Pass pulls out a large painting in his studio. Gabriel looms in the frame, eyes painted without pupils, and hands held palms out in admonition. The power of the image overwhelms the mind.

Donald recounts that in the vision, human figures lay on the ground with forms rising out of them as if something was emerging from a chrysalis. "It was almost a transfiguration, a rebirth" he says. He considers what he saw to be the resurrection of the dead. He hopes that his work based on it is an expression of life and hope as it has showed him that life will continue, that death is a transformation within life.

What I wanted especially to share with you, readers, is the sense in his art of the greater powers beyond us. It speaks of the reality of spiritual worlds and spiritual beings of undreamt of power and compassion. Speaking of his experience, Donald says "we are all one of the great many beings who will eventually rise from the dead and be a part of this great scene. I believe that every one being, that every creature on Earth, is held in compassion by God, and I believe God is the centre of compassion. This is the one thing that came through all this: the one thing I felt all the way through this is this overwhelming sense of compassion."

To see more of his work, check out www.donaldpass.com.