Commissions are open

Your story,
made visible.

“A portrait made for you—not simply a photograph reproduced in paint.”

Photographs begin the conversation. They are references, never instructions for duplication. Through consultation, composition, color, environment, subject, and symbol, Lacy uses artistic license to create an original work of art that carries the meaning behind the person portrayed.

Begin a Commission

Commission story 01

Percy

A portrait conceived for a room, a ritual, and the way one client wanted to live with music.

A spacious 1970s-inspired listening room with a sage sectional, vintage hi-fi, record player, and the Percy portrait installed above the stereo
Listening-room installation concept

2026 · Oil on canvas · 48 × 48 in.

Portrait as environment

The client had acquired a 1970s hi-fi stereo and record player to create a room for music and meditation. She shared photographs of the wall, furniture, décor, palette, and the room’s intended function.

Those details became part of the portrait’s visual vocabulary: headphones, the receiver, sage and olive tones, warm oranges, concentric forms, and a posture of deep listening. The result was not decoration added after the fact. It was a work conceived to belong to the life of the room.

Applying the final varnish to Percy · 24 seconds

Commission story 02

The Struggle Was Real

A portrait shaped by a woman’s experience with breast cancer and the complicated work of recognizing beauty through change.

Original commissioned portrait

Beauty, interrupted—and reclaimed

Lisa’s portrait speaks to hair loss, femininity, identity, and the tension between internal and external beauty during breast-cancer treatment. Floral forms move across her skin and gather around her body—not to conceal what happened, but to give transformation its own visual language.

The portrait does not reproduce a single photograph. It translates an experience: struggle, vulnerability, persistence, and the insistence that beauty remains present even when its familiar markers have changed.

From first marks to the finished portrait · 26 seconds
Finished-work reveal · 10 seconds

Reference, not replica

From photograph
to interpretation

A photograph preserves likeness. A commissioned painting must also create atmosphere, emphasis, rhythm, and meaning.

The client’s love of canary yellow—and the color and character of her décor—became the foundation of the painting’s palette. Because she is also drawn to collage, Lacy developed the portrait through a postmodern mixed-media approach, moving beyond the source photograph to create a work shaped around the client’s personal world.

Meaningful excerpts from poetry and personal journal writings were printed and collaged into the background. Partially revealed through layers of paint, the words become both texture and testimony: fragments of the life she has lived and quiet declarations of the new season she is entering.

Client photograph used as the reference for a commissioned portrait inspired by her love of canary yellow, collage, and her home décor
Photographic reference · The client’s canary-yellow palette and décor informed the work
Eileen Lacy painting a canary-yellow mixed-media portrait with collaged excerpts from poetry and personal journal writings
Poetry and personal writings collaged beneath layers of canary-yellow paint

How it works

The commission process

Your story is the starting point. The process is collaborative, while the finished work remains unmistakably an original Lacy painting.

01

Consultation

We discuss the subject, story, emotional intention, preferred scale, and where the work will live.

02

References

You share photographs and, when relevant, images of the room, furnishings, meaningful objects, colors, and symbols.

03

Direction

Lacy develops the composition and visual language, using artistic license rather than copying a photograph.

04

Painting

The portrait is built by hand through drawing, color, surface, symbolism, and oil paint.

05

Completion

Final details, curing, presentation, delivery, or shipping are coordinated directly with the client.

Individuals · Families · Legacy portraits

Let’s make
something lasting.

Contact Lacy to discuss the person, story, setting, and symbolism your portrait should hold.

Begin a Commission