Family Tree Portraits

How would you like to have your family expressed as trees in a custom hand-painted painting or paintings? Does that sound a little weird to you?  Let me explain!

The idea is to represent each member of your family as different types of trees.  Different in size, shape, colour and placement in the forest of trees making each stand out as individual.  Two trees standing together may represent a couple and the flowers at their base may represent their children.  Grandparents may be represented as older trees on the topof a hill.  In the end, you will have a painting that has meaning to the entire family and can be passed down for generations.

A Family Tree Portrait may be exactly what you need for yourself or to give as a gift to the family matriarch or patriarch, or even to a new couple starting out in life.

These paintings are meant to be able to grow with the family by adding smaller side paintings as well.  As new children are born and others join the family, new smaller paintings can be added to the main painting.  Each family may want to have their own portrait series to hang in their own home.  Or Giclee prints can be made of the main family portrait to be available for everyone in the family to cherish in their own home.

How it all takes shape

The process for this is a little different than a regular commission oil painting. 

To create these unique oil paintings, this is one of the few times that I will work from photographs, if you have them.  I’ll also need to know anything you can tell me about your family.  Specifically family tree, ages of children, everyone’s favorite colour or colour they most often dress in, if people are particularly close to or estranged from family members, and a bit about their personalities.

What if you don’t know all that about everyone????  That’s ok.  We can create a whimsical family tree oil painting with whatever information you have.  The more I know, the more I can personalize your piece, but I can do quite a bit, just from knowing names, ages and how they are related.

Throw in a few photos and favorite colours if you know them (asking could lead to interesting conversations) and that’s plenty of information.  So you see, you won’t need to write an essay to generate a stunning piece of art.

And really what could be more fun to present to your parents or grandparents for their anniversary or a birthday than a reminder of how you are all connected?  These hand-painted oil paintings also make a great gift for new parents, to commemorate their family’s growth.

You can see in this example that the two parents, husband being represented by the Blue Pine Tree and the wife being represented by the Red Tree are at the top of the hill and the family spreads out from them.

The husband had actually passed away so that is represented by placing his tree on the far side of the hill.  The wife has since taken a new husband which is represented as the stone at her base.  You can also see that each of the other trees also have a stone at their base which also represents their wives or husbands.

The original husband and wife had three children, first two boys represented by the purple and yellow pine trees, and the youngest being the daughter, the orange tree.

Each of their children as mentioned above has had two children of their own represented by the flowers at there feet.  All their children are girls except for one which is a slight blue colour.

There are some other more subtle things tied into the painting about the family dynamics.  The purple tree son is more like his father in life, so his colour was more in the blue/purple spectrum while the other two children are much more like their mother and are also more similar to her in colour.  They also are closer in relationships so their positioning on the hillside reflects that as well.

As you can see a picture really can say a thousand words and, in this case, it is a thousand words about your family.

To find out how to get your own Family Tree Portrait,

please Click Here to contact me and we can discuss

how to make it all happen.