Generations
by Elizabeth King
Acrylic on canvas, painted from an old photograph.
A fair-skinned, senior man with balding white hair sits in a white chair. He laughs and looks down at a young child with curly, blonde hair in a dark blue dress and white tights in the bottom right corner of the frame. The child looks back at the man and laughs. The room in the background is different shades of purple, with a doorway sitting on the left side of the frame.
A portrait of an older man reaching out and smiling down at a curly, blonde-haired child about to sit on his lap.
Jeremy
Acrylic on canvas
A white, shirtless man holds a sleeping baby with their cheek pressed against his chest. The background is a deep black, and both their skin is warm red and yellow tones with a bright white highlight on the man’s chest and the top of the baby's head. The man looks down at the child with a slightly concerned look on his face. The man’s back is cut off by the right side of the frame, while the bottom cuts off his waist.
A man is holding a baby against his bare chest, looking down with a concerned expression.
Sarah-167
Acrylic on canvas
Three girls pose for a picture. The girl in the centre, who appears to be the youngest, has shoulder-length primary blonde hair half up in a ponytail and blue eyes. She is riding a rocking horse with her knees at either side of its face. The horse is a cream colour. The girl to the left is a bit taller than the centre girl and leans their heads together. She has wavy, long blonde hair falling just past her shoulders and blue eyes. The girl on the right is slightly shorter and leans her head on the middle girl’s shoulder. She has long, brown, straight hair and blue eyes. One strand of hair falls across the right side of her face below her eye. The other two girls have small smiles while having a big grin that shows most of her teeth. They are all wearing black long-sleeved shirts.
In the background of the image is a long, skinny, brown wooden table. There is a drawer to the left with a golden ring-like handle. On the right, it holds a lamp with a cream lampshade that looks orange from the light and a golden stand with two words stacked on top of each other. There are five decorative family photo frames with back and white photographs inside the table’s left side. The wall is a light blue with patches of light in the middle and by the lamp.
Three girls pose for a picture with family photographs on a table behind them.
mom & me
Acrylic on canvas
A mother gives her baby with short, brown hair and brown eyes a bath with their backs to the viewers, and you can see their faces reflected in the bathroom mirror. Behind them are the sink and white counter with blue square tiles on the wall above and below it. A soap bar is in the top right corner lying next to the sink faucet, and a hairbrush sits to the left of the sink with a white cloth bundled above it.
A baby looks at their reflection in a bathroom mirror with their mother holding them up in the bathtub.
“I love to paint family tree portraits by painting photos of ancestors behind the posed family. Available for commissions.”
Elizabeth King is a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist—She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvellously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.”
King has won numerous awards and fellowships for art, writing, and environmental research. She’s been published widely, including in Clarkesworld. Her stories are on Tangent’s 2019 and 2020, the year’s best stories. She's been represented by the Los Angeles Museum of Art Sales and Rental Gallery.
Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at: www.elizabetheveking.com and amazon.com/author/eeking.