Family Portraits
Painting the people I love has been one of the greatest pleasures of my artistic journey.
This post is very personal and near and dear to my heart. I’m sharing the Finkle family portraits I have painted over the years: my wife, Susan; my daughter, Julia; and my sons, Andrew and Adam. These are the paintings I treasure most of all.
If I were to stop painting entirely, I would feel I had reached the pinnacle of oil painting by having painted my loved ones. As I mentioned in earlier posts, my mentor gave me a very important piece of advice: “Paint what you love.” With this in mind, the paint falls off the brush onto the canvas in an effortless frenzy. I love capturing the beauty of my family in candid moments at different times in their lives.
That enjoyment set me on a path to paint portraits of many individuals. It continues to inspire me to create moments in time, captured forever.
Years ago, I submitted my painting of Julia to a Canadian portrait exhibition. I also entered my self-portrait in a show at the Quinte Arts Council in Belleville, Ontario.
“I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.” — Salvador Dalí
— Christopher Finkle
The wish to preserve a family moment also led me to First Skate and the portraits in Memoriam.
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