In Joy, I shared the image and story of a wedding present portrait of my niece Elizabeth and her now-husband-then-fiancé Chris at the moment of their engagement. Elizabeth's older brother James married his then-fiancé-now-wife Jen about three months after that wedding, and I took a different approach for a gift painting for them. James and Jen became engaged in Amsterdam prior to the whole COVID-19 thing, and James had prearranged for a photographer to be there to capture the moment. The "She said yes!" photos that were shared show James and Jen on a bridge with flower boxes and quaint Dutch architecture in the background.
Aside (make that a snide aside): Back in my day, people didn't do these high-falutin fancy proposals in perfect locations with all the bells and whistles. They walked uphill both ways in blizzards to propose any old place, by gum, and on-call photographers be damned. But I digress.
Anyway, instead of a portrait, my goal was to paint the bridge itself, with the couple as an incidental detail. Do you know how many romantic bridges there are in Amsterdam? Neither do I, but I can tell you that there are more than 100, and every dad-blamed one is architecturally distinct. How to find the right one? Well, sitting drinking coffee with the mother of the groom one morning, we scoured the internet for pictures of Amsterdam bridges. The bridge railing posts had a certain kind of ball on top and that was our sole clue to follow. I think we looked at at least 500 photos on Google Images until one got pinned down and I felt pretty confident that it was the right bridge. This made me happy.
The happiness later faded because pretty confident is only a distant cousin of absolutely certain. So putting the Deerstocker cap back on I googled wedding photographers in Amsterdam. I then emailed a photo of the couple on the bridge to a randomly selected photographer describing what I was trying to do. I included words of apology because I assumed the photo had in all likelihood been taken by a competitor. All I wanted to know was the name of the bridge so that I could fine tune my Google Image search. I really did not expect an answer.
To my surprise and delight, I received a prompt reply which not only named the bridge (which was decidedly NOT my pretty confident guessed one), but also included a Google-Earth link to the bridge itself. This allowed me to digitally explore the bridge from every angle and viewpoints from adjacent streets in order to select the composition of the painting. Dutch people are the greatest! No, let me be more specific: Aleksandria Rudenko of Rudenko Photography is the greatest. Next time you are in Amsterdam, hire her to take your picture. You'll love it.
Back to the painting. I have no idea whether a canal boat was passing under the bridge when James proposed, most likely not, but, hey, artistic license. The parking sign suspended in mid air is, I must acknowledge, a mistake. But I remembered that James is partial to the artworks of Magritte, so I told him that I did it on purpose as an homage. It's our little secret, so don't tell him (wink).
That's it for nieces and nephews with pending weddings at the moment. While a painting is a more personal and one of a kind wedding gift than something picked out of a registry, it's always a bit of a gamble because there is no guarantee that any given painting will necessarily be the recipients' cup of tea. I follow up with each married couple to let them know that it's okay for them to give an honest reaction; I will never feel insulted if an unasked-for painting is consigned to a laundry room, closet, doghouse, or handy landfill. So far, though, these personal paintings as gifts seem to have been well received.
Prior to James' and Jen's wedding, we spent a couple of weeks exploring southwestern national parks, so if my history is a guide, you might be seeing paintings of canyons in the near future. Consider yourself forewarned.
