A family of artists, with AI painting yours.

Painted Thanksgiving is the Thanksgiving wing of a family of artists—the same studio that paints cats, wolves, houses and the family dog. Some of us have been creating for seventy years. We built this room because nearly all of the Thanksgiving art we see is a cartoon turkey with the colours swapped, and nearly all of the AI art that we see doesn’t inspire us.

So the shelves here are painted from the traditions themselves. Tradition is Currier & Ives, the 1940s magazine cover, the Dutch harvest still life, the Hudson River autumn and the homecoming platform. Gathering is the parade morning in pyjamas, the pie table, the hayride at dusk and the kids’ table. Silly is turkey hats on everyone including the dog, the food coma on the sofa and the moment the drumstick went missing. Forty-eight rooms, and none of the three shelves would recognise the others.

What every one of them shares is the rule: the faces, the coats and the front of your house are kept exactly as you sent them, and a judge scores every painting for likeness before you see it. We paint children here. A parent or guardian signs for every photograph with a child in it, every painting with a child is looked at twice before it is shown, and once more, by a person, before it is printed.

If we are successful, the oil paintings we create in our studio can hang in our own homes and don’t need to be advertised to support our family. Three paintings come back from one photograph, watermarked, before you pay. We hope one of them is the one that hangs in the hallway every November for the next thirty years.

We are a family of artists, passionate about the act of creation. Some of us have been creating for seventy years. We recognize that times change, so we decided to embrace them: the speed of creating art has accelerated, and ideas become reality in days or weeks rather than months or years.

This studio began with a realization—nearly all of the AI art we see doesn’t inspire us—and with the idea that we could build something better. If we are successful, the oil paintings we create in our own studio can hang in our own homes and don’t need to be advertised to support our family.