In the wall text in the Ikon Chapel, Cobb describes the seated, shirted man in the foreground as reminiscent of the Gerasene demoniac ( Mark 5:1–20): He looks beyond John the Baptist, perhaps mentally preparing for the solitary forty-day fast in the desert he’s about to embark on. Cobb deliberately made him indistinguishable from the others to emphasize his full humanity. Jesus, says Cobb, is the young man with the black hair and black trunks. And this is a local setting: Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis in Central Texas, a famous nude swimming hole. The models are all associated in real life with water-surfers, plumbers, fishermen. Several men climb down the rocky shoreline to enter the cleansing waters and be raised to new life. It is a lakeside scene portraying John the Baptist-the long-haired, bleach-blonde guy at the far right-calling folks to repentance. Baptism by Water is, along with its companion piece, Baptism by Fire, the largest painting in the series, at over six feet long.
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