Home Sweet Home

I like front porches. I have a front porch but it's not "that" kind of porch. My front porch is covered in steel and vinyl and it is not 'inviting'. I do have a sun porch that is comfortable and invites visitors to sit and stay for awhile. But the old-fashioned porch of the 1940s and 50s is a rarity. My husband;s grandmother had one. Her house was a classic 'bungalow' style and faced the main road in town. The traffic could be annoying at night when you were trying to sleep but on a lazy summer afternoon it was a comfortable place to sit and watch the world go by. Neighbors out for a stroll or walking their dogs; all stopped to say a few words and remark on the weather. There were no strangers in this era.

When did we begin to enclose those porches with screens? Eventually the porches shrank until they were little more than a stoop with no room for a chair. Living rooms became larger to accommodate the ever-increasing size of new forms of entertainment like television. While our horizons became broader and began to include the world more and more, our local connections disappeared. My husband's grandmother knew the names of everyone on her street and probably two or three streets down. She knew who was getting married, who was expecting a child, what grade the kids were in and she never met a stranger. I know a few of the residents in my neighborhood, but most are strangers and we have lived here for 11 years.

I think the front porch has become a symbol for a kinder, gentler time. I filled this one with warm light to infuse it with a romantic and nostalgic feeling. I added a cat because I love cats.

House Paintings Make Great Gifts for the Parents

More than half of the people who buy my house portraits buy them as a gift for their parents. Many times the parents are moving and the painting will be a memento to hang on the walls of their new home. Something about a painting is just more personal than a photograph of the house. Is it the color? Maybe the personality of the house comes through better in a painting? I'm not sure, I only know that when people tell me to emphasize something I can do that pretty easily. I have noticed that a flag flying in front of a house is always more noticeable in person than it is in a photograph. Is that because the flag is waving at me? I don't know, but that knowledge helps me create better paintings from photographs. If they have a flag in the photo and I put it in the painting it is always bigger than life and it is always fluttering, regardless of whether there is a breeze.

This painting was for the girl's parents and she took the pictures with the Christmas decor on the lawn- actually there was more- another couple of reindeer and more lights. I toned it down and it is still somewhat busy for my taste, but not, I suppose for people who decorate extravagantly, as this couple appear to do. In this painting I had an overcast photo of a house with a muddy lawn to work from and I asked her if we could add snow and even a snowman to make it more Christmassy. She said yes and that was kind of fun. Another option with a house painting is to put it on your Christmas cards-- this one was a good fit.

The last request? The little dog on the porch was a Bichon Frise they owned for a long time. 

11" x 14" oil on Canvas

Reindeer on the Lawn