Your House Portrait Solution
Six Generations, One Home
THE STORIESTHE MEANING OF HOME
Nicole Hanson
8/25/20262 min read
Kathy's home had been in her husband's family since the early 1900s. By the time she found my booth at Thursdays Downtown in 2023, she was already preparing to move.
She took my card immediately, an idea brewing. “I was immediately excited at the prospect,” Kathy said. “Oh, we've got photos. A photo is wonderful too. We’re always snapping quick pictures, too many of them, but a painting is art.”
She emailed me soon after, with a photo of her home.
It would be a Christmas gift to her husband, if she could wait that long to give it to him. He had grown up there. Together, they had raised their children there. And now, one of their daughters would raise her own sons there. Kathy’s grandsons would be the sixth generation to grow up within those walls.
“I looked at it as a keepsake that would represent not only our history, but also the transitioning that was going on at this time from the house to another house, and then to be inhabited again by family members.”
We talked details. A gray sky. Omit that door. Add hanging plants in full greenery. We went back and forth until the colors were just right, the intricate details perfectly representing the home and all that it stood for.
And when she finally saw the finished painting, she felt both joy and gratitude. “It's kind of got whimsy to it. It's not this serious punch of photography,” she shared with me. “It was almost an affirmation of having dwelled there. It is a keepsake and it just represents so much.”
A photograph records what a house looked like.
A painting can represent what the house meant.
Houses are the backdrop to our growth, they are the witnesses to who we have become, and that’s why I love to paint them.
Nicole Hanson Art
House Portriats
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Nicole Hanson
P.O. Box 352
Stewartville, MN 55976
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