Debra Keirce

I love painting commissions. Part of the excitement for me, is sharing my art with people. So I am like a giddy little kid when it is time for the big reveal. The downside is, commissions are usually shipped to the collectors, so I don't get to be there in person. If it's a particularly emotional piece, sometimes I won't hear back for days or months. I'll usually get a note saying the painting was delivered, and not to worry - they love it. But it's not the same.

Add to that, the fact that I feel it is unprofessional to share the work, unless I have express permission from the collector. That rarely happens. I love it when it does, but many people prefer not to share art that was created just for them, and I respect that.

I do paintings for Lucretia's Pieces, a puzzle company in Vermont. I have been creating two or more original paintings for them each year for almost three decades now, and I have not been allowed to share a single image. You see, they are a custom puzzle company, and their collectors receive the puzzle in a box with no image. They delight in making these puzzles the most difficult to solve. If I published an image, their collectors could cheat and probably find it in a google search. So there is a retrospective of my paintings from the last 30 years out there that will never be made public. 

Secrets are fun, and I am thrilled to be working on a few of them now. In this post are images of the secrets I've painted recently that I can share. As you see, my commissions are often people, but pet portraits, landscapes and buildings (churches, houses) are also common. I am often asked why I paint mostly still life for the galleries and the shows I enter. It's because I rarely get a commission to paint still life. 

Well, now you know all my secrets. Actually, not all... I'm good at keeping them. :)