Walter Rane, whose renditions of scriptural text have elicited comparisons to master painters such as Rembrandt, studied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, California. His studies included classes on anatomy and classical drawing, something many schools during the early 1970’s weren’t teaching. As a result, his paintings demonstrate a high degree of anatomical accuracy and color mastery.

After college, Walter began his career in New York City as a freelance book and magazine illustrator. In 1994, after more than twenty years of commercial work, he moved his family to Oregon to focus on portraiture, landscapes, and scriptural studies for which he is becoming well known among Latter-day Saints. Shortly after his move to Oregon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commissioned Walter to do a mural for its visitors’ center at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. The project sparked his interest in religious painting, and he has continued to work on such efforts as the Book of Mormon paintings in By the Hand of Mormon, the Last Supper, and a striking piece of Christ healing a blind man.