Fuji Dream (Groethe)

by Godfrey J. Ellis – 16×10 Acrylic Jan 2022

Missionary leaders, like this young man, periodically go out with new missionaries to monitor how they are doing in their service. Fun-loving Elder Groethe came to our house on one of those “splits” one day. He had seen some of my other portraits and shyly asked what I would charge to do a painting of him, too. Well, I wasn’t going to charge for a young person who was serving a multi-year, Church mission at his own or his family’s expense, so I agreed to paint him as a gift, hoping I wasn’t opening an unsustainable Pandora’s Box of requests by going beyond “our own” missionaries.

As you can see, the portrait departed significantly from the reference photo. He liked the composition of the body showing the handmade scripture cover someone had made for him but he preferred the photo with the smaller and tilted smile. So I swapped and lightened the faces. Originally he had been called to Japan but, due to Covid, he was assigned to Washington. Still, he wanted a background that reminded him of his “almost” foreign mission and chose the view of Mount Fuji and Japanese cherry blossoms.

Below is a photo of him holding the painting and another one of both of us holding it.

Here are four photos of the painting as it took shape. I had to invent the elbows and the chair.