A young man cannot imagine how his Grandma might paint his portrait. I surprised him by having him sit on a dark stairway. When he relaxed, I told him to just turn to look up at me. This created a great pose for a young man.

I have done a lot of paintings of my grandchildren. They have given me many occasions to see a good composition. I refer to these as genre paintings. There came a point where I wanted and needed to do some smaller works. That is about the time I decided to do a formal head and shoulders of each of them. I did Ryan about the time he was a senior and Caiti after graduation, but I have tried to do the younger kids at twelve. They grow up so fast.

Let’s see if I can add text to this. There is a nationally famous artist named Nelson Shanks, now deceased. An artist I know who lived in New York, was on the board of Allied Artists of NY and worked with this man daily, even jurying shows with him. My friend paid me the highest compliment by telling me he believed N. Shanks would have given this painting high ratings. Wow, that is a fantastic compliment.

I have always loved this image of our youngest daughters so I decided to make duplicate paintings so they could each have one. Five years after I began, the two half done canvases were calling to me. Since I was in the middle of so many projects, I just started work on one of these. It turned out so well that now I wish I had worked on both as I had when I started them. I will be diligent about finishing the second but I am curious about how it will compare to the one I have already finished. I will post an image whenever I get to it.