Finished Commission

 
 

This is the finished painting of the project I posted about on Friday. Just my usual amateur photo skilz. There is some surface glare and the colors aren't quite "on", but close enough for jazz.

Though it was different than a lot of the commissions I've done in the past, I was taken with the subject right from the get-go. What I like is that there is so much going on, so many layers of meaning in what is, really, just a family snapshot. If Norman Rockwell had painted this picture, we would have had to listen to critics yammering about how it was a cliche, a staged and sentimental paean to a vision of America that never really existed.

Except that it did exist, and in some places and families it still does.

The two gentlemen in the picture are the patron's grandfather and great-grandfather, and the great-grandfather is seen reading the scriptures aloud. For the purposes of this post, we'll just call them Father and Son.

One thing that strikes me about the image is that it runs counter to the modern myth that the lot of the children is inevitably to rebel against the parents. There have, shockingly enough, always been families wherein the children really wanted to grow up to be like the parents, where adulthood meant to the young something solid and enviable, and where the old were venerated because they were old. There was mutual affection and respect between this Father and Son that is appreciated and even cherished two generations later.

There is so much great subtext here, but I hate to blather about it. It's a bit of family history that also gives a glimpse into national history, and maybe all histories, which seem to run in cycles, after all.

Comments

[e.]

*Much* better!

I like this rendering of the painting as well as the meaningful perspective it provides.

Interesting how the other (linked below) one invited a much more sinister and creepy interpretation as compared to the total overview above.

Incidentally, it may serve as some sort of metaphor for how we mortals see things partially (as we mere mortals can only see the natural/actual evils of the world where we are afforded a similarly narrow perspective inviting only their more sinister interpretations) and how God has an entirely different, much brighter view of things given His omniscient perspective (i.e., a view of the total picture)!

http://timothyjones.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ecb4e3988330120a66ee39f970c-pi

[Adrienne]

Excellent!!