To not know what to do about this gift :(

[Ifyourawizardwhydouwearglasses]

Oh dear :(

There is a photo in our house of me and my old dogs on the hills behind the house. It's been missing lately but I didn't notice it until recently. I love it and its one of my favourite pics ever.

Anyway, DH came in the other day with a large package. It was a painting of the picture. As a gift for me. It's a LOVELY thought......but the painting is terrible.

It's just....really bad. It looks like a gcse art project. At best.
I look like a weeble and the dogs are just awful - they could be any chocolate labs. In fact, you can't even tell they're labs. They're just brown dogs with back legs that don't bend properly. It looks like a child did it :(
God I feel awful saying this.

I can't even look at it because its a scene that is so personal to me, which has been totally spoiled.
He hasn't had a bill yet from the 'artist' but I'm sure it'll be eye watering.

The artist in question is a family friend (I don't know them, friend of his parents) so to return is as being substandard would cause huge offence all round.

Wtf do I do!?
Obviously I've said thank you very much etc, and I am SO touched by the thought of it, honestly I'm not ungrateful of the sentiment.

But what do I do with the thing? Should I be honest? He said 'its not brilliant is it...?' and he looked so disappointed.

:(

YES!

Ok am uploading from phone. For scale I can tell you this painting is four feet by three...so a sizeable item.

It's the sort of thing one might imagine a serial killer producing during art therapy in jail!

OMG

It's so dark in colour I had to take it outside to photograph.

Yikes!

Oh my.

To the tune of, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones

Ha ha, is that a skeleton in a grave?

If it looks like a shallow grave, that's because it is. It was painted at an archaeological dig.

Where have you got it hanging Pictish ??

That's a conversational piece and a half!

Oh dear lord. I hope small children are never in a room with that, they would probably need therapy afterwards.

Woah. That's. ..festive.

When dh's aunt unwrapped it and asked "what do you think? Do you like it?" I was stunned into silence as all I could think to say was "Is this a Fred West?"

Isn't it grim?

Well if you have purple crushed velvet curtains, black marble floors and a large gothic mirror I reckon it will look pretty rad....

It's stashed up the side of a large chest of drawers, and will never be hung. We're keeping it for the frame, which is rather nice.

To be fair to dh's aunt I can almost see why she thought it might have a home with us, as we do have a lot of oddities in our house...but no - it's just a bad painting of a depressing subject.

Pictish, that is, well, I don't know how to describe how it makes me feel. Please promise to put it in pride of place should you ever sell your house - the Rightmove photos would fuel Mumsnet for a week at least.

I like it.

Gosh I am lucky

My Mum and BIL have both painted pictures of the DCs and they are lovely. I don't display them because a) there isn't one of the youngest dc and I worry he'd be upset and b) the older 2 are teens now and I think they'd be embarrassed. But I am chuffed to bits with them and in my dotage will get them properly framed.

I once got a picture of my Tedious Car Bore Ex's car painted, which he was thrilled with. The wife of one of his Tedious Car Bore friends asked for the name of the artist so she could get one done of his car - when it came the guy had done the indicators/foglights wrong at the front, instead of being orange, white, white, orange, it was orange, white, orange, white. Snoooort!

Goodness me.
Stick it in the garden...it can be part of your halloween decs