For our clients’ San Francisco pied-à-terre, they wanted to commission a work that celebrated the city they love while also creating a deeply personal connection to their family’s history within it.
Artist Derek Lynch was a natural choice. His work explores idealized urban landscapes, particularly the distinctive neighborhoods and architecture of San Francisco. Combining digital photography, painting, screen printing, and architectural forms, Lynch reconstructs the familiar into richly layered cityscapes that feel both recognizable and imagined.
For this commission, our clients shared photographs and places meaningful to their family, including their own building, which Lynch incorporated into the composition. What emerged was much more than a portrait of San Francisco. The family named the finished work 5 Generations of the Lee Family in San Francisco.
Within the cityscape are places that tell the story of five generations of the Lee family, the neighborhoods where they lived, the churches they attended, the courts where they played basketball, and the public schools, after-school programs, and Chinese schools that were part of their lives. Our clients now delight in pointing out these places to visitors, sharing the family stories held within the artwork.
The finished piece is exuberant and wonderfully detailed: colorful façades, neighborhood landmarks, architectural fragments, and the unmistakable silhouette of the city all come together in Lynch’s distinctive visual language. Yet woven throughout this expansive portrait of San Francisco is an intimate family history.
It is one of the things I love most about commissioning artwork. A piece can be created not simply for a particular wall, but around a story, a place, or generations of memories that give it meaning. In this case, the artwork became both a portrait of San Francisco and a visual history of one family’s enduring place within it, a lasting connection between art, family, home, and city.
