The Places We Carry Home

There is something special about traveling in the summer.

We spend months looking forward to a trip, carefully planning where we'll go, what we'll see, and who we'll share it with. Yet when we return home, it is rarely the famous landmarks that stay with us. Instead, we remember the quiet street we wandered by accident, the café where we lingered longer than expected, the light on an old stone wall, or the view that made us stop and simply take it all in.

Travel has a way of becoming part of us.

When I paint places, I am not only painting architecture or landscapes. I am painting the feeling of being there. The warmth of the afternoon sun, the peacefulness of an unfamiliar village, the excitement of discovering somewhere new. A painting becomes more than a record of a destination—it becomes a reminder of a moment in your life.

My painting of Turenne, a medieval village in the French countryside, was inspired by exactly that feeling. Walking through its narrow streets, surrounded by centuries of history and quiet beauty, I knew it was a place I wanted to remember long after I had left. Painting it allowed me to revisit that experience, brushstroke by brushstroke.

That is also one of the reasons I love creating commissioned paintings.

Many of my collectors return from a memorable vacation with hundreds of photographs stored on their phones. Hidden among them is often one image that captures everything they felt in that moment—a favorite street in Italy, a quiet beach at sunset, a family walk through a historic town, or the view from a mountain trail. Those photographs deserve more than living on a screen.

Transforming a meaningful photograph into an original oil painting allows those memories to become part of your everyday life. Every time you walk past it, you're reminded not only of where you were, but of how you felt.

As summer begins and new adventures await, I encourage you to take the photographs that speak to you—not just the perfect ones, but the ones that make you smile. They may become some of your most treasured paintings one day.

Wherever your travels take you this summer, I hope you find a place you'll carry home with you.

Stacey