Chapter II · Thanksgiving · 77 days
The turkey is not the point.
From the carving of the bird to the backyard game.
The turkey coming through the door. The touch-football game on the lawn before dinner. Grace, with every chair full. We paint the aunts and the cousins and the one who always carves, and we keep every face exactly as you sent it.
The Long Table
30 traditions
Magazine-Cover Americana
The 1940s Saturday Evening Post cover tradition — a table, a turkey, a story.
Currier & Ives Homestead
Hand-coloured lithograph — the farmhouse, the sleigh, the return home.
American Folk Harvest
Naive farm-scene painting — pumpkin wagons, corn shocks, a whole busy valley.
Farmhouse Egg Tempera
Dry-brush tempera realism — weathered board, a window, still November light.
Hudson River Autumn
Luminous landscape oil — blazing maples, a still lake, cathedral light.
Dutch Harvest Still Life
Seventeenth-century abundance — pheasant, grapes, pewter, a single candle.
Regionalist Harvest Mural
Grant Wood rolling fields — rounded haystacks, patterned rows, clean light.
Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur
Illuminated folk certificate — tulips, distelfinks, hearts, a harvest border.
Harvest Quilt Block
Pieced-cotton patchwork — the subject stitched into a maple-leaf quilt.
Vermont Woodcut
Two-colour woodblock print — barn, birches, geese, a cider press.
Homer Autumn Watercolour
Winslow Homer transparent washes — Adirondack lake, guide boat, red leaves.
Pilgrim-Era Dutch Portrait
A 1620s Leiden portrait — black cloth, white collar, one candle, one pumpkin.
Saying Grace
The whole table, heads about to bow — a magazine-cover moment of a full house at dinner.
Kitchen-Steam Interior
A Dutch-lit kitchen — pots steaming, a window, the family crowding in to help and taste.
Leaf-Pile Afternoon
Golden light, a raked pile of maple leaves, the subject mid-laugh — painted in loose American oil.
Brandywine Farm Field
The Brandywine tradition — a dry stubble field, a weathered barn, the subject standing in thin winter light.
Backyard Football
The Thanksgiving game on the lawn — sweaters, a leather ball, a mid-century sporting-cover style.
Carving the Bird
The carving moment at the head of the table — a Currier & Ives print, hand-coloured.
Needlework Sampler
A cross-stitch sampler — the subject in tiny stitches, a border of turkeys, pumpkins and wheat.
Coming Home for Thanksgiving
The homecoming on a small-town platform — steam, suitcases, the embrace, a 1940s illustration.
Hearthside After Dinner
The fire lit, plates cleared, everyone sunk into chairs — a tonalist oil in amber and brown.
First-Harvest Tapestry
A woven tapestry — the subject at a long outdoor harvest table, seventeenth-century in dress and weave.
The Pie Table
A Chardin-quiet still life with the subject behind the pies — pumpkin, pecan, apple, one candle.
The Road Home
A station-wagon on a country road under November trees — the drive home, in a warm 1950s poster style.
Kitchen Documentary
The hour before dinner, painted straight — steam, counter clutter, everyone in the way.
Flat Editorial Vector
The magazine feature illustration of now — flat shapes, limited palette, generous white.
Three-Colour Riso Harvest
Rust, mustard and blue on rough stock — a modern risograph harvest print.
Backyard Golden Hour
The football game on the lawn at four o'clock, painted in late modern light.
Modern Quilt Geometry
Improv piecing in solid cottons — the contemporary quilt tradition, not the sampler.
Table, Lit by Phones
The group photo someone is always taking — modern interior realism, mixed light.
The one rule
The face stays. Everything else is repainted.
We are a family of artists, and the holiday art we kept being sent was one look with the colours swapped: orange in October, red in December. That is a costume, not a tradition. So each room here has its own painters behind it — Currier & Ives and Nast, the Brandywine and Hudson River schools, Rackham, Whistler, Bruegel in the snow and the magazine covers of the 1940s — and none of the four would recognise the others.
What we keep is you. The faces, the coats, the dog and the front of your house are held exactly as you sent them, and a judge scores every painting for likeness before you see it. We paint children here, and only here: a parent or guardian signs for every photograph with a child in it, the darker Halloween shelf is closed to them, and every painting with a child is looked at twice before it is shown and once more, by a person, before it is printed.
Most of the AI work doesn’t resonate with us either. We spent months on these rooms so that at least one of them resonates with you.