A commissioned painting is one of the most personal things you can bring into your home or give to someone you love. It's also one of the most misunderstood transactions in the art world — mostly because neither party talks clearly about what it actually involves.
I've painted commissions for collectors, couples, brands, and families. Here's what I wish everyone knew before they reached out.
1. A Commission Is a Collaboration, Not an Order
The most common misconception is that commissioning a painting is like ordering a custom product — you give the specifications, the artist executes them, you receive the result. That's not how it works with a painter whose practice is rooted in testimony and expression.
What you're bringing when you commission me is a set of intentions, a context, and a trust. What I bring is my full practice — my visual language, my biography, my decisions in the moment of making. The result belongs to both of us, but the making is mine. That's what makes a commissioned painting different from a custom print.
2. The Story You Give Me Becomes the Painting
I ask every commission client to tell me their story before I touch the canvas. Not what they want it to look like — what it's about. A marriage. A recovery. A loss. A season of breakthrough. A legacy they want to leave. A prayer they've been carrying for years.
That story is my primary material. The paint is how I translate it. If you come to me with a specific color palette and a mood board, I'll listen. But if you come with the real thing — the actual weight of what you want the canvas to hold — that's where the work gets powerful.
3. Scale Matters More Than You Think
Most people underestimate how large a commissioned painting should be. A 16x20 on a wall that needs a 36x48 is like whispering when the room needs a shout. Part of my job in the commission conversation is helping you understand what scale the space and the occasion actually demand.
My originals work best large — not because bigger is always better, but because the visual language I use was born at scale. The boldness, the color fields, the graphic presence all compress below a certain size. When in doubt, go bigger.
4. The Timeline Is Part of the Work
I don't rush commissions. A canvas that's supposed to hold a decade of marriage or a season of recovery deserves the time it takes to get right. Typically I work in a 4-8 week window depending on scale and complexity.
What I tell every client: the painting will arrive when it's ready, and it will arrive right. I've never delivered a commission that I wasn't fully behind. That's a promise I make to myself before I make it to you.
5. A Live Commission Is a Different Experience
If you're planning an event — a wedding, a corporate activation, a worship gathering — consider a live commission instead of (or in addition to) a studio painting. I paint in front of audiences regularly, and the canvas that gets made in that setting carries the energy of the room it was made in. The people who were present for its creation have a relationship to it that a studio piece can't replicate.
Live commissions are available for events of all sizes. The finished canvas is yours to keep. The memory is the room's.
6. One Original Changes the Room It Enters
The clients who commission me once almost always come back. Not because I'm chasing repeat business, but because one original that carries real testimony tends to reorient the collector's understanding of what their walls should be doing.
A canvas that came through someone's testimony and was made for your specific occasion is not decoration. It's a witness. And once you've lived with a witness on your wall, everything that was there before feels like it was just filling space.