Most of my paintings are created using the same process: an idea, locating models, photo shoot, and so on. None of that was true for Love Prints. It wasn’t my story.

The photo I used for the painting was a snapshot offered to me from a friend. Her daughter Ashley and friend Bennett were sharing their first kiss as three-year-olds. Their parents had met in a Lamaze class, and the two were born ten days apart. As their friendship continues through triumphs and tragedies of career moves and relocations to other cities, every reunion seems like a time warp in which the past melts away like their ice cream cones.

Although I felt I knew Bennett, we’d never met. However, something even better happened when our daughter Maggie was at a camp counselor’s meeting in North Georgia. The hostess asked all the young leaders to introduce themselves, and after Maggie’s turn, inquired if her mother was a painter. The woman, Maggie learned, was the mom of Bennett, a fellow counselor and the mysterious toddler boy in my painting with her friend Ashley.

Years later, when I was publishing Little Lessons of Faith, a book of paintings and meaningful messages, I asked Bennett’s father Kerry to write the story behind the snapshot of the children. He titled it, “A Little Lesson in Friendship."