Inspired by a photo

I have family in Finland that I have never met. We have been pen pals for the past 18 years, she is a far better pen pal than I am. She keeps in touch, sends family photos and small gifts occasionally. Over the years, I have watched her children grow up through photos.

The last letter I received had a small photograph of her farm, the barn in the mist of the morning sunrise. It was a small photo but there was something about it that made me want to paint it.

My next letter to her will be a package. In return for all of the small gifts she has sent me over the years, many of then hand-crafted, I am going to send her a painting of her farm. I like it enough to want to keep it and hang it in my house, but that wasn't why I painted it. So I will make myself a print using my own self created process.

I will spend some time outside to get a high quality photo and then I will gesso s piece of canvas pad a couple of times so that it doesn't aborb the ink from my printer and look faded, and will print a copy directly onto the canvas. She will have the original, and I will have a print. I hope that she likes it as much as I do.