Lochlan 4th Portrait: Loch Surrealism by Lola Gil

We decided to break with tradition this year and choose two artists for the twin 4 year portrait. A while back I had run across Lola Gil’s work at a gallery show down in LA. There was something unique about her subjects young, pinched faces and I really loved the rich settings she created in each of her pieces. She made the list for the 4th portrait and ultimately she was my first choice for Lochlan’s portrait.

For some reason, Lochlan was the harder of the two to find an artist. I think ultimately I was so used to choosing an artist for Paley, it made Margot’s choice easy while I was more cautious with Lochlan. Working with Lola was wonderful. In one of her original sketches, the setting was very similar to the twins first portrait. In the end, we choose a really great and unique setting with Lochlan posing with what I still think is the Loch Ness Monster, although Lola suggested it’s actually a dragon. I am going with Ness. Ultimately Lola’s direction for the piece was exploring a surrealism take on the environment. 

Lochlan’s first reaction to the piece when it arrived was “that’s me and there is a smiley face, oh that’s nice!”. The sad end of this story is I took the piece to my framers up in SF last week and sadly had yet another bad experience. I’ve been going to this framer for over 10 years now and over the past year, they have been loosing more and more staff. I never got the scoop as to why people were dropping like flies but it was sad to see the quality of customer service. This last visit, the new studio manager was over with the fact I was taking her away from a project. In the end I had it framed there but the signs were pointing else where and a few days later, a gallery owner who contacted almost a year about potentially opening their own framing studio. Sent me an email about being ready to take on clients. How is that for perfect timing?