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My first commission was in 1996. I had been painting portraits of people whom I knew but keeping them for myself, and I had completed four or five which I kept in a small photo album in my pocketbook. I was visiting an acquaintance who knew one of the subjects and so I showed the portrait to him. He loved it and asked whether I'd accept a commission to paint his wife. For anyone out there who's a birder, the gentleman was Pete Dunne. His wife's portrait, "Linda's Garden," is on my website. It's still one of my favorites.
I've also done several posthumous portraits. "Smiling Forever" is of a girl who was murdered, and in painting her portrait I felt as though I were somehow giving a little bit of life back to her. It was commissioned by United Parcel Service to be hung in her school, and all they had collected was $350 so I accepted that amount as payment in full. I worked from prom photos and some pictures of girls wearing the school track uniform, since that was how they wanted her depicted. Another posthumous portrait, "On the Beach," was of a six-year-old girl who was struck by her school bus and killed. That was the hardest one, emotionally, that I ever tackled. I was working from a tiny school photo but her father wanted her depicted on the beach, so I used a shot I took at a nearby shore and then had the child of a friend who had a similar build pose for the arms. I did cry while blocking it in. But it gives such joy to the families to see a loved one re-created on canvas, in a new pose, that it's worth it.
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