A Family Portrait

If I had a nickel for every darling piece of art my 3 children have made for me over the years, well, you can just imagine. But this painting in particular is very special, and here’s why.
Soon after we moved into our home 9 years ago, (and during Camp Crafty, Isolation 1999) I painted a folk art-style family portrait to surprise my returning campers. It hung in our family room for years. (The painting is shown in the first photo of the Shed Gallery.)
Then, in 2003, my oldest sister, who lived in Arkansas, passed away suddenly and Jeff and I adopted her youngest child, Sarah, when she was 5. And so there came a time when I felt that painting no longer represented our current family. I replaced it with some other decor and my older children, who had grown fond of the painting, often questioned why I took it down and tucked it away. I replied that even though that was a picture of our family before Sarah came, I didn’t want her to ever feel that she wasn’t a part of the whole picture, anytime she entered that room. They wanted me to “paint her in”, but I never felt that was the right solution.