My grandmother and grandfather bought this house in 1933. I visited it for the first time in 1952, when I was a newborn, and the last time in 2003, when I saw my grandmother for the last time. Some house paintings need "modifications," either by adding attractive elements or deleting unhappy ones. In this case, nothing was needed to improve a house that had been lovingly improved and cared for for 70 years.

I spent my formative high school years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was an undergraduate at the University there, where my father was also a professor of English literature. My parents are both dead, but I still have many friends in the university town. This is Vince and Katherine Kopp's house just off Franklin Street. Vince is a doctor and has a practice in Edenton, North Carolina, where he and Katherine spend most of their time. They nevertheless still own this handsome house in Chapel Hill, and I stay there whenever I am visiting. It used to be the rectory for the Chapel of the Cross, two blocks away, in whose church yard my mother's ashes were buried. It seemed that Vince and Katherine needed a picture of their Chapel Hill house to hang in their Edenton home.

My friend Lawrence is very devoted to his house in Somerville, on which he has lavished time and money. He asked that I do a portrait. When it was blocked in, the foreground parking spaces seemed unattractive and empty. After some discussion about possibilities, Lawrence let it be known that he and his wife Margaret like to spend weekends bicycling on the Minutemen Bikeway that runs between Cambridge and Lexington. This suggested the couples' bicycles as a foreground focus. And there they are-Lawrence's is green, and Margaret's-with its red panniers-- is gold.

This is my second interpretation of my house in Cambridgeport. My wife Anne and I are from North Carolina, and we have displayed that state's flag since we bought the house in 1989. The previous owners were our friends the Hamdis, who returned to Oxford, England where they now live. We met the Hamdis through Leslie, a client of Anne's. Leslie had spent so much time in the house with both the Hamdis and my family, she bought the first painting as a memento.

Which goes to show you can own a painting of a house other than your own!

My aunt and uncle live a few miles from the campus of University of Connecticut in Storrs. Driving to their house from Boston, one gets off Route 84 and follows Route 89 to Mount Hope, passing through the small crossroads of Westford. A yellow house there looks like it was built in the 1700s, and is beautifully proportioned and situated. One day, I decided I had to do a painting of it-and did.