Steps from each side of the baptistry lead into the baptismal pool.

Detail of the edge of the second baptistry painting which was painted over the original baptistry painting that Mr. Kiser had painted directly onto the baptistry wall.

Bethany Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC

Artist: Mack Kiser, 1999

Jill’s notes: Mack Kiser (1926-2014) painted his first baptistry landscape at Bethany Baptist Church in the mid-1960s. That first landscape depicted the Jordan River. About thirty-five years later, in 1999, he completed a second baptistry painting at Bethany Baptist, depicted here. Mr. Kiser’s son, Steve, reports that his father was dissatisfied with how the paint on the first landscape had faded. The second painting depicts Pilot Mountain, a North Carolina landscape beloved by Mr. Kiser. Mr. Kiser, a World War II veteran and native of Stokes County in North Carolina, also painted baptistry landscapes for Mountain View Baptist Church in Stokes County and for Shattalon Church of Christ and Northwoods Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. In the mid-1980s, he gifted a baptistry painting to Bethany Baptist’s sister church in Petersburg, West Virginia.