I recently painted on a very different type of canvas. A client came to me with a very unique request. He wanted to gift a painting to his mother for her upcoming 88th birthday. And the canvas was to be an antique one man saw. It was roughly 4 and a half feet in length. I had never painted on something like this before, and I would be lying if I said I was not nervous. They are a ranching family and the scene is a cattle drive, something their family does annually. I was given many of their photos as reference for the painting. The people in the scene are family members. They include his mom, his brother and his two sisters. He had a special request, to paint his beloved son who had passed away, in the front leading the family cattle drive. We talked about how the scene would look. I felt excited, nervous and honored. Over the few weeks that I worked on it, he would come to check on the saw's progress and share stories with me. I even learned about identification of the local cattle by their ears. I spent many many hours painting the saw. I thought about the the age of the saw and the past. How this saw, so old and rusty was once new. That someone held it and used it. My husband and I joked about how strong the person had to be to use this saw. I felt so many emotions while painting the scene too. This saw and the painting represented work and time. Time that a close knit family spent (and still does) working together. It represents love and memories.
