During COVID, when so much of life became centered around home and family, we had the opportunity to collaborate with artist Jay Kelly on an especially meaningful commission for our clients.
They wanted the artwork to feel deeply personal, almost like a family scrapbook woven into a contemporary work of art. Together, we began gathering pieces of their lives: maps of places that held significance, newspaper articles the wife had written during her career as a reporter, and a treasured black-and-white photograph of the five family members walking hand in hand along a beach. Each element represented a memory, an accomplishment, a place, or a chapter in their family's story.
Jay incorporated these intimate fragments into the piece's foundation before creating the dramatic wave that sweeps across the surface. From a distance, the work reads as a powerful contemporary seascape. Up close, another story emerges. Maps, photographs, newspaper clippings, words, and fragments of printed material slowly reveal themselves, giving the artwork an entirely different dimension.
That spirit of discovery is central to Jay Kelly’s work. Originally trained in graphic design, Jay developed a distinctive fine art practice that uses books, photographs, magazines, maps, and other printed materials as his palette. Rather than painting only with pigment, he effectively paints with paper, layering and arranging fragments to create remarkable depth and detail. From a distance, his works can appear almost photorealistic; up close, they reveal themselves as intricate collages.
For this commission, that technique made the work uniquely personal. The materials weren't simply chosen for their color or texture; they carried the history of the family itself.
For me, this is what makes commissioning artwork so meaningful: it creates something that could belong to no one else. It is a beautiful work of art in its own right, but it also carries a story known most deeply by the people who live with it.
