Mother & Child Portrait for My Sister: A Christmas Surprise

For years it was my sister Ericka's vision to be a mother and begin raising her family. After taking some big risks and changing her entire life to realize her dream she finally found herself right where she wanted to be and pregnant with her daughter: River Ruth. So, to celebrate this incredible life change and new experience I decided to surprise her for Christmas. It was a wonderful surprise... something I LOVE to be a part of.

Commissioned paintings are a wonderful aspect of my work and I look forward to talking to you about your great love, and how we can create an experience like this for you.

Hey everyone, it's Dustin Neece here again. My sister Ericka just had a baby and that makes me an uncle. And I thought I'd tell you guys about what I did to celebrate the event because it's a pretty cool time for my family and for my sister. For my sister Erica, being a mom has been her dream in life, and it's just so cool to see somebody that you care about so much, living their dreams and realizing what they truly wanted. It just makes her so happy.

For me, I'm really happy being an uncle. Personally, I don't think I want to have kids. But I think part of that is because I feel like each one of my paintings is like a creation. I know it's different, having kids, obviously, but I just I get so much out of making these paintings and creating them and sharing them with people. I feel like they have lives of their own. When they're done who knows where they're gonna end up. They may be in someone's home for a while, they may be in a gallery, some of them are in museums, they have these journeys. You create them and then you set them free. People always ask me:

"Do you miss your paintings or is it hard to let them go?"

For me, it's not hard to let them go because I know how much joy they are going to bring to the people that own them. So it's fulfilling and satisfying all the way around. It's fulfilling to make them, and then it's fulfilling to give them away, to sell them, and to have them go out into the world.

For my sister, I wanted to do something to surprise her, to celebrate the birth, to celebrate the event. It really is so cool. The amount of joy that it's bringing to her and to everybody around her is just the coolest thing to watch.

So anyway, we took pictures of her under the guise of posterity. We just thought it would be cool to have really nice pictures of her with the baby. And of course she was so busy, she completely forgot we took them. So I was able to take them back to my studio and do this.

Because I had to work from photos on this one, I did the whole thing in my studio. It didn't take quite as long as some of my more elaborate pieces done from life, but still, as I worked on it, I kept the same thing in mind that I always do while working on a painting like this:

I kept coming back to this:

"What is the feeling that I'm trying to convey? What's the feeling that I'm trying to invoke?"

Because for me, a painting is all about feeling. And I personally, I don't think of feeling just as an emotion. To me, it's more than that. It's actually a state of being.

It's a frequency of energy that we experience through our bodies as a feeling. You know what I'm talking about. When you really feel something, we casually call it an emotion, but really it's more than that. Think about someone whom you love deeply.

When you feel that love, it isn't just an emotion in the way that we think of it, it's something you feel with your whole body. It's like your body is a musical instrument and someone just struck a new chord. You can feel the vibration, you can feel that feeling. And in my experience, we automatically entrain to whatever we feel most often.

The thing we feel the most becomes a habit and it's not just in our daily rhythms, but even in the very cells of our body.

That thing that we feel most often becomes our way of living and that feeling becomes our natural state. It's why happy people are happy and sad people are sad because we entrain to what we feel most strongly and most often. The more you feel one way, the easier it is to keep feeling that way. So for me, when I do a painting, I'm always thinking, what do I want my audience? Or even more specifically, what do I want the owner of this painting to feel?

Because a painting, just like our experiences in life, are all about feeling. And in my mind, the feeling is the only reason the painting exists in the first place. It's the only reason to create it.

Because I know that if I can create something that elicits in my viewer a feeling that they want to feel, that every time that they look at that image, it will bring back or bring up for them that feeling, that frequency, that state of mind, and they will entrain to it. And more that they see that image, the more that they feel that feeling, the more that state of mind will become a part of who they are.

That's what I believe, and it's why I do what I do.

So with this painting, I wanted to make an image that will always remind my sister of this time in her life, that will remind her of a time when everything came together in one magical moment, when her dreams became a reality and motherhood began for her.

Because she had to take big risks in her life to get where she is today. She is one of the bravest people that I know. Because she had a dream, but she didn't just sit around and wish for it. Manifesting her life as a mother and living in the place that she does now took some serious courage.

It's a long story, but the short of it is this: she had to give up a high paying job living comfortably in the city working for a high powered lawyer, end her current relationship, pack up all her things, and move to Virginia and get a job as a nanny to be where in her heart she knew she wanted to be and where she knew she wanted to raise her family. And you know what? After she moved, it wasn't even eighteen months before she had met the man of her dreams and she was pregnant with River.

It just goes to show you the power of not just an intention, but the power of thoughts, words, and actions all lining up.

She overcame her fear and doubt to follow her dreams, her great love, her passion, and found herself in the life of her dreams. To me, that's what this painting is about.

It's never just about the image. It's about the story behind the image. It's about the feeling behind the image, and it's about how I can use my brush to create something that brings that feeling out and makes it a beautiful reminder of those things that we want to see and feel, those things that we truly want.

It was such a joy to make this painting for my sister, but you know what the best part was? It was surprising her, and I caught it on film. Check it out.

Merry Christmas Ericka, you can open your eyes.

As an artist, you get a lot of time to think about things.

As you're working, when you're in nature, as you're creating, you get to really think about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what you truly want for your work, for yourself, and for the people around you. I always think about how do I want my work to affect the people in my life, the people that it reaches out to. I have people that are buying my work in Europe and all around the world. And I know that the more that I do, the more that it will continue to spread out.

It's a beautiful thought. It really is. But I always think about what do I really want for my work. And I have to say that for me, one of the most rewarding experiences is when I create a painting with somebody or for somebody.

It's really the coolest thing because it's not just about me, but it's about the person that I'm working with or the person that it's for. And so it's not just about making a beautiful painting. It's about capturing a feeling, capturing a peak experience, capturing an emotion that somebody else wants to hold on to. And I get to take all the time that I've spent and the skills that I've developed to manifest it, to make something that will last forever that embodies that feeling.

And this was a perfect example of that. So anyway, I hope that you enjoyed watching this video as much as I enjoyed making it for you. And I wish that you were here in person and I could have told you in person, but, you know, this is a good medium too. So, anyway, leave me a comment or write me back.

I'd love to hear what you think, I'll talk to you soon.