Case Study: Custom House Portraits As Gifts For Empty-Nesters
A gallery of nostalgic house portraits, each one commissioned as a gift of gratitude from grown kids to their parents.
Why Custom House Portraits Make Meaningful Gifts
There are all kinds of reasons for gift-giving: major holidays, closing on a house, graduations, weddings, birthdays, and on and on.
A Gift That Honors Both Parents and Home
But one of the most touching reasons I hear from my customers for giving a gift is that they want to commemorate their family home as a way to honor their parents.
And having a watercolor house portrait commissioned as a gift celebrates not only the parents, but the home that they bought and raised their family in.
When Grown Kids Look Back With Gratitude
Now the kids are grown up, they’ve moved on from the family house, sometimes raising their own families, thinking back on what it was like for their parents to raise them. Maybe with some kind of gratitude or even just deep respect for how much effort and love it takes.
More Than Just Square Footage: A Childhood Home Portrait
The childhood home you grew up in is more than just square footage, more than just four walls and a fireplace, more than just a place to sleep. It lives in your memory as almost another member of the family.
Capturing Childhood Memories in Watercolor and Ink
This is especially true when you’re little. Speaking personally, as a child I spent hours exploring all the nooks and crannies of my house, the dark basements and dusty attics, sitting down on the floor and touching the carpeting, and leaning up against the walls; every surface was intimately familiar to me.
A portrait of your family home, painted in my usual dreamy style of watercolor and ink, can be more evocative than a photo because I try to capture the feeling of a place, not necessarily the exact color of the shutters or the precise dimensions of the front porch. It almost looks like it would in your memory.
(That’s what I’m going for, at least!)
Heirloom-Quality Gifts of Gratitude
The paintings on this page are all gifts of gratitude from a child to their parent(s). Gratitude for the memories, for the love, and for the four walls that contained their childhood. All painted in a light, colorful, storybook style that’s more like a nostalgic dream than an architectural rendering.
How to Commission Your Own House Portrait
If you’re inspired by these heirloom-quality gifts and you’d like to commission one of your own, feel free to reach out and let me know. Just click the button below and fill out the commission request form - no pressure, it’ll just start the conversation between us!
