In August 2023, I made my very first post on Facebook about James’ passing. So many of you sent such beautiful replies, and some of you sent James’ artwork you own and love. One of those replies was from Cheryl Welch. Her painting of Rayaak was so beautiful. I had never seen it before, and it stayed with me that one day I will contact her when I was ready to begin this journey of the James Yale Legacy Project.

The day arrived the first week of 2026 to reach out to Cheryl. The short story from our conversation is that she had a vision upon waking in 1995 that she couldn’t forget. When she was looking for an artist to paint her vision, she was visiting a gallery, and saw James’ artwork. She knew at once that James must be the artist to paint Rayaak. The gallery told her that James Yale had stopped painting, but he gave her James contact information, with the warning that James would have to interview her to see if this commission was something he believed in. He did, and the rest is history.  Cheryl’s vision brought James, the artist back to life to continue painting.

I will let Cheryl tell the rest of this story that she wrote on the back of the painting below.

Sometime, about 1995, I woke up with a vivid image in my mind. It was a girl, about fourteen years old, standing by a stream with a unicorn. It was springtime, and the dogwoods were in bloom. In the stream I could see the reflection of the dogwoods and the unicorn, but not of the girl. The image haunted me for weeks. Why could I not see the girl?

One day, while telling my sister Judy about the image, it came to me –  the unicorn represents all of mythology and the truths that lie therein. The dogwood tree represents christianity. These truths are not seen, but are eternal. The girl represents our human bodies. Though we can see them, they are temporary.

I later asked James to paint this. Unfortunately he did not get it right, the reflections, or the lack of the girl’s reflection, but I love the painting, and it reminds me that the most important things are unseen.

After realizing the significance of the image, I ran across the bible verse. It fits perfectly with the image. I am sure I had read it before, but it never sank in until I saw Rayaak standing by the stream with her unicorn.

2 Corinthians 4:18

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal“

— Cheryl Welch