The Coast House

Here before you is another exquisite painting by Susan Rios, of Pierside Galleries. Good paintings depicting the values of home and family should be displayed throughout the house, especially when children are growing up. They will want to imitate what they see. If they are surrounded by posters of the coarser type, they will use those as their role models, instead of finer, higher ideals found in good art, scenery, and beautiful things like a vase of flowers.

This painting got me to thinking: is my home worth painting a picture of? I'd like to have a few corners that provided enough inspiring beauty that would inspire one to perserve a memory on canvas, or a photograph. Beauty contributes to a healthy mind.

I was invited to a home for sale on the coast. Inside was the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen. This woman had taken a small house and turned it into something so lovely, I didn't want to leave. I was so impressed, I asked her if I could "make friends" with her and get her to come and see me 70 miles inland, and tell me what to do with my house to get that same peaceful look and feeling to my home. I recognized that the things she had displayed or arranged were exactly the things I had in my own home, only I had not thought to put them that way. I've got a box of shells "somewhere," but she had them in a basket on top of her mantel. Her husband was a minister and her house reflected their devotion to God, with verses and sayings plastered on the walls in artistic ways, surrounded by painted roses and vines. I hope I get another chance to visit with this woman before the house is sold and she moves away.