Friendship is a close relationship between two or more friends, either close or fond of each other and offering mutual support. While we often celebrate our friends with gifts of experience and objects, in America we are starting to see commissioned artwork as a popular way to celebrate friendships. Although we easily communicate with friends on social media, through messaging apps and photo storage apps, our friendships aren’t always being celebrated in the way they deserve, the way a custom piece of art will.
One of the latest trends in friends paintings is the Personalised friends paintings. This type of gift is really special, not guided by fashion, but rather by the long term effect it has on the recipient.
The Shift Toward Meaningful Gifting
10 years of being on the receiving end of “I love you, choose your coffee” and realising that 10 years ago, we all wanted more personalisation – now more than ever. This is why we love custom jewellery, and also why we love engraved keyrings and items, and this is probably why all of us are looking for more unique, meaningful, special presents. Presents that prove our special bond and aren’t just plain old easy.
Friendship is a very special emotional bond. It is different from family relationships, as we have the choice to whom we give the title of friend, while our family is given to us by nature or by law. We build friendships through experiences we share in life, through our successes and failures, our trips and holidays, through laughter and sorrow. When we want to give a present to our best friend on his or her birthday, graduation, wedding or other important achievement, we want always to give something more important than a simple commercial product.
A hand painted portrait from a special photograph, will turn that moment in time, into a 3D object that can be held and touched, and means more to you than just a snap shot ever could.
From Digital Photos to Tangible Art
I loved this social experiment where the author of the piece finds out when friends last viewed their posts. Social media is deeply intertwined with our everyday lives and we rely heavily on our social connections online, as well as in person. So many friendships are formed and sustained online through platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We update our Facebook profile pictures with the latest selfies, post exotic holiday snaps and pepper our closest friends with endless pictures of meals. But have any of them actually looked at them recently?
A new way of thinking about photography. These personalized portraits take something familiar and turn it into something truly special. No longer is a photograph something we tuck away in a corner of a room or at the back of a drawer.
We need to remember that a photograph is not oil on canvas. Light needs to be refined, composition needs to be adjusted and value, texture and color needs to be added with the brush to the original to make a totally new and unique piece of art that translates a shared memory.
Here is one possible reason search interest in friends paintings and similar customized art gifts has increased in recent years. People are looking for items that are perceived as beautiful, personal, and meaningful.
Why Friendship Portraits Resonate So Strongly
There are several psychological factors behind the growing popularity of this trend.
1. Emotional Permanence
Some friendships can last a lifetime or even many years. Some paintings can last a lifetime or even many years as well. Unlike the flowers that eventually wilt, the chocolates that are eventually eaten and the gadgets that are eventually obsolete, a good piece of art can remain for a very long time. Artwork serves as a lasting record of the friendship it was created.
2. Shared Identity
Generally speaking, our friends share significant events from their lives with us: our studies at university, our first jobs, holidays abroad, weddings and births. But a portrait is more than just an image of the person who sits for it – it records and documents an episode from their lives.
3. Visual Presence in the Home
Today, interior design is becoming increasingly more personalized. We no longer tend to furnish our homes based on current trends, but more on our individual characters. And what could be more personal and meaningful than taking a photo of you and your best friend, framing it and displaying it as a unique friendship portrait?
The Influence of Social Media
Irony of our time! We are constantly surrounded by digital images but at the same time, we are passionate about creating visual art in the real world. Friendships are also heavily documented through social media. Birthdays are of course often shared, as well as best friend anniversaries.
However, digital posts are ephemeral. They disappear in feeds within hours.
A painting can give you something permanent in a very temporary world. Where your Facebook feed keeps moving on to the next great post, a painting can become a permanent part of your life – a picture in a hallway, above a bed or in a living room that creates a connection that endures long after the first impression fades away.
Occasions Driving the Trend
Personalized friends paintings are especially popular for:
- Milestone birthdays (30th, 40th, 50th)
- Bridesmaid or maid-of-honor gifts
- Graduation celebrations
- Long-distance friendship reunions
- Retirement or career transitions
- Memorial tributes to shared experiences or lost loved ones
Why frame an ordinary photograph that can be lost and is interchangeable with countless other views that could have been photographed instead? The fact that a photographer or sender chooses a photograph as a gift-object is meaningful in itself. The choice of photograph for a gift is almost invariably symbolic: the giver has chosen a picture that will be meaningful to both the giver and the recipient.
More Than Decoration
I was having one of those moments where I started to think about the fact that Friends Personalised Painting is becoming more and more popular. And then I started to think, it can’t just be a fad? (I mean, I love a good fad, but a trend is so much more enduring, no?) And then I started to think, WHY ON EARTH ARE FRIENDS PERSONALISED PAINTINGS BECOMING SO POPULAR?! And the answer is that people want to CELEBRATE their friends. They want to acknowledge their mates and their best friends and the people who really make a difference in their lives. They want to honour their friendships in a way that is truly meaningful and that will last a lifetime.
Friendship is one of the most significant relationships we can have in our lives. It is a relationship that we freely choose, where we give and receive support and that endures the test of time. This is why creating a shared memory into a portrait art piece is an excellent way to recognize the value of friendship.
We live in a world of instant gratification and everything happens in the now, and by tomorrow, it’s gone. The act of commissioning a piece of art is in itself a statement, as it says that this moment has to be kept.
I think that presentational expressions of emotion are always changing and probably always will. A personal portrait will therefore remain a part of this never ending circle of life – not because it is fashionable, but because it is a basic human desire to keep significant people and occasions safe.