Over the years, I have taken to heart my family history and its memories.   When others have had enough with looking at photographs, I have not had enough.   It is the pride in knowing where you have come from and those faces that you are actually related to.   You see yourself in your great grand mother and you take heart in knowing that you great, great aunt was the first to do something revolutionary.   It is only having two known photographs of your childhood home and you want to see it in color and not a jagged rip through it.

            I started with wanting to see my uncle in color when he was thirteen and then I found I could use the same formula to colorize and enlarge my grandmother's portrait.   Many family photographs followed including a great small photo of my mother at age five in her background sitting with great joy on a freshly hand made swing made by my then young Grandfather.   In enlarging and carving out the small details of color and light, I was able to find out what the two were wearing and holding, thus bringing a whole new feeling and spirit to the image.   An image that has great meaning in my family as many images hand in hallways and stairways.   Family moments that are pasted in photo albums that have sat for some great spans of time that need a little help here and there.   Edges that have died off long ago.   Wrinkles and tears that give it character but a family member's face deserves better.   Memories and photographs are equally special and sacred.

            A wonderful woman from the Philippines asked me to do her portrait, as he was when she was about twenty.   The only photograph that she had was an inch by an inch and a half, ripped torn and was given in an envelope.   There was a lingering feeling that came with the photograph; she stated that it was the only photograph that survived a hurricane that hit her home in the Philippines.   This was quite a photograph.   I was unable to create a pastel portrait for her, but when she asked to have the photograph back I felt guilty that I was not able to anything for her.   In an attempt to make amends for the inability to fulfill a process of artwork, I enlarged the photograph, added the left hand where it had been missing do to a tear.   I smoothed the image and then faintly added color to the portrait faintly and carefully to not overdo the image. In the end, I printed not only copy of the original photograph but wallet sized imaged and eight by tens, a whole batch of photographs so this wonderful lady can know that not all is lost to nature's fury.   She was pleased.   In fact she asked later for me to redo her daughter's graduation portrait.