Boats, Family, and the Feeling of Freedom
A beginning on the water
My favorite part of a boat ride is when the boat picks up on plane. The motor settles into that steady four-stroke sound and the wind starts blowing. The bank begins moving past you and suddenly you are really out there. It feels exciting, real and free. There is something very American about that feeling. I have never quite been able to explain it.
The first boat I remember belonged to my Granny and Papaw. It was an old step-through from the 1970s. After that came a Ranger bass boat, and eventually they settled on a Tracker.
Our bass boat is a 1982 Ranger. We love it. I would not trade it for the world.
When I was growing up, going out on the water meant being there for the day. We swam, fished and played. Whatever the normal routine was on land could fade away for a while.
Granny and Papaw usually had relatives and friends around, too. People came from different places and somehow ended up together near the same water. There was always somebody fishing, somebody swimming, people talking, kids playing and food somewhere nearby.
One of my earliest memories is baiting hooks for Granny.
That is part of why a boat has never felt like just a boat to me.
The boat is how you get there
A boat itself is great. I certainly love ours. But what matters is everything that becomes possible because you got out on the water in the first place.
It does not really matter how you get there. It can be a pontoon, a ski boat, a jon boat, a kayak, a paddleboard or an inflatable raft.
You swim, fish and explore. You sit there. You go around another bend because you want to see what is there. You get far enough away from whatever needed doing that day that, at least for a little while, it stops mattering quite so much.
Then years pass, and the boat itself becomes attached to all of those memories. That is why an old boat can mean more to somebody than a newer or more expensive one ever could. It was there, and over time it became part of the time and place.
The way I see the lake now
I photograph everything.
Most of the time, honestly, I am photographing from the boat or I have just walked off the boat. I am probably within a hundred yards of it.
The boat is usually how I get there, but it is also how I get into that mindset. Once I am out there, I start looking.
Every day I go out there, things are different. Something else has bloomed. It is drier than it was a week ago. The water has dropped. The leaves have started changing. A mushroom has come up and may be gone again before I come back. Something is fruiting. Something is flowering. Something I have passed 10 times finally catches the light differently enough that I notice it.
I look at the banks a lot. I look at what is growing out of the rocks, what is moving through the trees and what has changed since the last time I was there.
Then I photograph it.
That is a huge part of where Lakehouse Portrait Co. came from.
The work has grown into wildlife, plants, fungi, birds, water, boats, houses and the places where all of those things meet. But underneath it is the same habit: Go back to a place, look closely and notice what is actually there.
The boat gets me there.
Why I make art from boats, houses and the places around them
When somebody asks me to make custom artwork, I usually start with their photographs.
It might be a boat. It might be the lake house, the dock, a favorite view or all of it together. What matters is understanding what they are actually trying to keep.
A particular boat may be important because it is the one the family always used. A house may matter because everybody gathered there. A certain view may be the thing somebody saw every morning for 20 years.
I pay attention to the details because those are what make one place different from another: the shape and color of the boat, the dock it sits beside, the bank behind it, the trees, the water and the way the whole place fits together.
I do not want to turn it into some generic idea of a lake.
I want it to still feel like yours.
Custom artwork starts at $295, including shipping. I draw and paint each image by hand using digital tools from your photographs, and the finished piece is produced as a physical, ready-to-hang canvas.
For me, that last part matters, too.
If the water is something you love, if that boat or house or view represents some of the best parts of your life, I think it deserves to become part of your daily life instead of living only in your camera roll.
You should be able to walk past it in your house and see it again.
It all comes back to the same place
I started with boats because boats were part of how I grew up.
Now I understand that they also taught me a way of being in a place.
Get out there. Stay awhile. Look at the bank. Notice what changed. Go around the next bend.
That has led me from baiting hooks for Granny to photographing fungi growing out of sandstone, birds hidden in the trees, wildflowers on the bank and whatever else happens to be there that day.
It has led directly into the artwork I make now.
So when I say I make art for people who know the water, that is what I mean.
I know why the boat matters. I know why you remember the bank behind it, or the dock where it sat, or the house waiting when you came back in. Sometimes what looks like a picture of a boat is really a picture of a whole part of your life.
If you have one of those places, I would love to see your photographs and make something from them. Or you can explore the Lakehouse collection and see some of the places, wildlife and details that have caught my attention from the water.
