Commissioned Paintings

One of the most rewarding things I do is working directly with clients in planning a painting of their house and property, along with family members, friends, and pets, all involved in activity. Typically the process involves interviews with the clients to determine their vision and several visits to the property for photography and to meet some, if not all, of the persons to be included. Each painting tells a story, whether set in the present, based on a memory, or created from an imagined scene from an earlier historical period. 

Below is a sampling of my commissioned work. Please contact me if you have an idea you'd like to discuss!

My clients began their discussions of a commissioned painting with remembrances of time spent at her family’s cottage in the early 1970s. Their memories begat more memories, and the time frame expanded to include the late 1960s and the early 1980s. Together, we winnowed and sifted through stacks of photographs and piles of memories and isolated the favorites, regardless of dates or the people represented. What resulted is a painting of my client’s children, siblings, and parents, as well as their friends and children of friends at a variety of ages and moments in time, enjoying all the relaxation, adventures, and fun a lake cabin provides!

To celebrate their golden anniversary, a married couple took all of their children and grandchildren (17 in all!) to a vacation home in northern Wisconsin. As an anniversary gift, the adult children commissioned a painting of the occasion. Tons of photographs and written memories were combined to tell some of the stories of the week the family spent together.

The size of this painting (6 feet in length!) was necessitated by the size of the clients’ home, property, and family and their desire to have many lake and land activities included in the painting. I was fortunate to be present for both days of the reunion to capture this large and lively group in action.

Below are selected detail images from the above painting.

This painting was commissioned as a gift for an adult child of one of my clients. The clients requested that I use my imagination to place their child’s twentieth-century home, family, and neighbors in an early nineteenth-century context. What fun!

Memories of my client’s youth prompted this painting. His childhood home, family at work, and neighborhood friends at play are all captured here—fragments of memories, moments in time, interwoven to tell a story.