CLR Creations
Your Place. Your Story.
Mapping the Places That Shape Our Stories.
Original paintings by Christina Leigh exploring place, memory, and connection through abstract cartography, portraiture, murals, and live painting.
Selected Works
Christina Leigh is a Savannah-based artist and founder of CLR Creations whose work explores the relationship between place, memory, and identity. Her abstract cartography paintings begin with real geography, transforming coastlines, waterways, streets, and boundaries through layers of color, texture, and movement informed by the history, culture, ecology, and personal experiences held within a landscape. This same philosophy extends into portraiture, murals, and live painting, preserving the people and moments that become part of our stories. Through each work, Christina considers how art can give memory a physical place to remain, honoring the places, people, and moments we carry with us.
Savannah Cartography Series: Mapping the Lowcountry
The Savannah Cartography Series is a love letter to Savannah and the Georgia coast, exploring a landscape shaped by water, history, culture, and memory. Through layered maps, flowing color, textured impasto, and materials inspired by the land itself, each painting traces the stories held within Savannah's rivers, marshes, islands, and communities. From the shifting shores and ancient oaks of Ossabaw Island to the oyster traditions and Gullah-Geechee heritage of Pin Point and the candy-colored nostalgia of River Street, the series honors the people and places that have shaped the Lowcountry across generations.
Commission a Painting
Custom Portrait Commission | Engagements, Weddings & Newborns [Frame Not Included]
A hand-painted heirloom created from your photographs and memories
Hand painted by CLR Creations. 100% GENUINE HAND-PAINTED ART.
Every portrait begins on a blank surface and is painted by hand using professional oil or acrylic paints. No printing, digital painting, or photocopying process is used in the finished artwork.
Created with archival-quality materials, each portrait is intended to become more than a record of how someone looked at a particular moment. It is an heirloom that preserves the people, relationships, places, and seasons of life we carry with us.
Portrait Commissions
CLR Creations accepts a limited number of portrait commissions each year, with a special focus on engagements, weddings, and newborns.
Engagement Portraits
Preserve the beginning of a shared chapter through a painting inspired by your engagement photographs. The setting can become an important part of the composition, allowing the landscape, architecture, season, light, and atmosphere surrounding the proposal to remain part of the story.
Wedding Portraits
Transform a favorite wedding photograph into an original painting created to live beyond the wedding album. Portraits may focus closely on the couple or incorporate the landscape and details surrounding the day, from mountain ranges and coastal horizons to gardens, historic architecture, florals, and evening skies.
Newborn & Family Portraits
The earliest days of a child's life pass quietly and quickly. Newborn portraits preserve this fleeting season through soft color, intimate details, and thoughtful observation. These paintings can celebrate a newborn individually or include parents and siblings, creating an heirloom intended to remain within the family for generations.
The Artistic Process
Portraiture is closely connected to the larger themes within my work: memory, identity, place, experience, and the passage of time.
I am interested in the details that make a memory feel alive. The way evening light settled across a wedding landscape. The expression exchanged between two people. The folds of a dress. A newborn's tiny hands. Flowers carried down an aisle. The colors of the sky. The place where an important chapter began.
Your photographs provide the visual reference, while our conversations help me understand the story behind them.
Throughout the process, you are invited into key moments of collaboration. We will discuss your preferred photographs, composition, setting, color palette, mood, and the details that feel most important to preserve. Reference images and progress updates help guide the painting while leaving room for artistic interpretation and the natural character of the materials.
The finished work is not intended to simply reproduce a photograph. It is an artist's interpretation of a memory, created slowly and individually by hand.
Materials
Choose from:
Cotton Canvas
Linen Canvas
Birchwood Panel
Oil or acrylic paint will be selected according to the desired surface, style, and character of the commission. All paintings are created using quality archival materials intended for long-term preservation.
Sizes
Small: 9" × 12" to 11" × 14"
Ideal for newborn portraits, intimate compositions, and single-subject portraits.
Medium: 12" × 18" to 18" × 24"
Well suited for engagement portraits, couples, newborns with parents, and compositions incorporating more of the surrounding environment.
Large: 24" × 30" to 30" × 40"
Designed for statement wedding portraits, family compositions, and paintings where the surrounding landscape plays an important role.
Gallery: 36" × 36" or larger
Created for large-scale heirloom portraits and expansive compositions integrating portraiture and landscape.
How to Order
Select your preferred portrait size and surface, add your personalization, and place your order.
Send a selection of high-resolution photographs from your engagement, wedding, newborn session, or other meaningful occasion. Whenever possible, include several photographs so I can understand the subjects, setting, light, and details of the day.
Within 24–48 hours, I will reach out to begin the collaboration process. We will discuss the story behind the portrait, your preferred composition, colors, atmosphere, and any details you would especially like included.
Once the direction of the painting is established, I will begin creating your portrait by hand. Progress images will be shared at key stages before the work is completed.
Once finished, the painting will be carefully prepared and shipped to you.
Timeline
Each commission takes approximately 6–8 weeks from execution to delivery.
Painting Time: Approximately 6–7 weeks
Shipping Time: Approximately 2–8 business days
Oil paintings may require additional drying or curing time before they can safely be varnished, packaged, or shipped.
Timelines may also vary according to the size, number of subjects, complexity of the setting, material selection, and overall scope of the commission. If the portrait is intended as an anniversary, wedding, holiday, or other time-sensitive gift, please reserve your commission as early as possible.
Production & Shipping
Delivery methods are determined by surface type, painting size, and destination to ensure the artwork arrives safely and in optimal condition.
Small and medium portraits are generally shipped flat and fully protected. Larger flexible works on linen or cotton canvas may be shipped rolled when scale or destination requires it, with final stretching completed by a professional framer upon arrival.
Paintings on birchwood panel are shipped flat with rigid protection. Large-scale works may require custom crating, freight shipping, white-glove delivery, or coordinated installation.
Each delivery method is selected according to the individual artwork and conservation needs of the piece.
Photographic References & Permissions
Clients are responsible for providing photographs they own or have permission to use as reference material. For professional engagement, wedding, or newborn photography, permission from the photographer may be required before the image can be translated into a commissioned painting.
CLR Creations can work with multiple reference photographs when appropriate to develop the final composition.
Guarantee
Because every portrait is created specifically for you, made-to-order commissions do not accept returns or exchanges.
Collaboration is an important part of my commission process. I want to understand the people, memories, and details you are trusting me to preserve before the painting begins. If you have questions about photographs, sizing, materials, composition, or the commission process, please contact me before ordering.
Reserve Your Portrait
Engagements become anniversaries. Wedding days become family histories. Newborns grow into lives of their own. A portrait captures that moment forever.
Reserve a CLR Creations portrait commission for your engagement, wedding, or newborn and transform a meaningful photograph into an original work of art created to be carried through generations.
[Frame not included]
A hand-painted map of a place that became part of your story.
CLR Creations accepts a limited number of Abstract Cartography commissions each year for collectors, families, hospitality spaces, and commercial interiors.
Each painting begins with a real place. It may be the city where you met, the coastline you return to every summer, the destination of a meaningful journey, your childhood home, a wedding location, or a landscape that simply feels like yours.
From that geography, I create an original abstract painting that explores not only where the place is, but what it means to you.
The Artwork
Every CLR Creations commission is 100% hand-painted from a blank surface using professional oil or acrylic paints. No printing, digital painting, or photocopying process is used in the finished artwork.
Your painting may incorporate recognizable elements of the location, including coastlines, waterways, roads, neighborhoods, topography, landmarks, or coordinates. These geographic elements become the structure for layers of color, texture, movement, and material inspired by your experience of the place.
The finished work exists somewhere between map, landscape, and memory.
Your Story Shapes the Painting
The commission process begins with conversation.
Along with the location, I want to understand what happened there and what you remember about it. A particular sunset may influence the palette. The blue of the water from a favorite trip may move through the composition. Local plants, architecture, food, history, geology, or cultural traditions may inspire color and texture. A road traveled repeatedly may become an important line within the painting.
For commercial and hospitality commissions, the process can also explore the history, landscape, architecture, community, and identity surrounding the property.
Research is an important part of my practice. Maps, historical references, ecology, photographs, and stories help me understand the character of a location before it is translated into paint.
Throughout the process, you are invited into key moments of collaboration. References and progress images help guide the work while leaving room for artistic interpretation, intuition, and the natural response of the materials.
Materials
Choose from:
Cotton Canvas
Linen Canvas
Birchwood Panel
Each painting is created using professional, archival-quality materials selected for longevity.
Oil or acrylic paint may be used depending upon the desired surface, scale, layering, and character of the commission.
Sizes
Small
9" × 12" to 11" × 14"
An intimate study of a meaningful location, ideal for a favorite destination, hometown, honeymoon, or personal milestone.
Medium
12" × 18" to 18" × 24"
Offers greater space for geographic detail, layered storytelling, and the relationship between landscape and memory.
Large
24" × 30" to 30" × 40"
A statement piece designed to hold a more expansive geography and become a focal point within a home or interior.
Gallery
36" × 36" or larger
Large-scale cartography created for collectors, hospitality environments, commercial interiors, and spaces where the artwork can become part of the architecture itself.
Reserve Your Commission
This listing reserves a place on the CLR Creations commission calendar. It does not represent the full purchase price of the finished painting.
Your reservation begins the collaborative process and is applied toward the final cost of your artwork.
After reserving, you will be invited to share the location you would like painted along with the memories, colors, experiences, photographs, and details that make it meaningful to you.
What Happens Next
1. Reserve your commission.
Secure a place on my painting calendar.
2. Tell me about your place.
Within 24–48 hours, I will reach out to begin the collaboration. You may provide an address, city, state, country, coordinates, map, or another geographic reference.
3. Share the story behind it.
We will discuss your connection to the location, meaningful experiences, preferred colors, landscape features, memories, and any details you would like considered.
4. Establish the artwork.
Together, we will determine the final size, surface, composition, palette, and artistic direction. Final pricing will be confirmed according to the scope of the commission.
5. Your painting begins.
Once the commission details are approved and the required payment is received, I will begin translating your place into an original work of art.
Timeline
Most commissions take approximately 6–8 weeks from execution to delivery.
Painting Time: Approximately 6–7 weeks
Shipping Time: Approximately 2–8 business days
Timelines may vary according to scale, complexity, materials, research requirements, drying time, and the overall scope of the commission.
Large-scale, gallery, hospitality, and commercial projects may require an extended production schedule.
Production & Shipping
Delivery is determined by the size, surface, destination, and installation requirements of the finished artwork.
Small and medium works are generally shipped flat and fully protected.
Larger works on flexible surfaces, including cotton and linen canvas, may be shipped rolled when scale or destination requires it. Final stretching or mounting can then be completed by a professional framer or installer upon arrival.
Birchwood panels are shipped flat with rigid protection. Large-scale panels and architectural works may require custom crating, freight shipping, white-glove delivery, or coordinated installation.
All delivery methods are selected with the protection and long-term preservation of the artwork in mind.
Commission Policy
Every commissioned painting is individually created for the collector. Because of the personalized nature of the work, commissioned artwork is final sale and cannot be returned or exchanged.
Collaboration is an important part of my process. Before painting begins, we will establish the location, scale, surface, palette, and overall artistic direction of the piece. Progress updates are shared at key stages so you can experience the work as it develops.
The final artwork remains an original CLR Creations interpretation of your location and story. Natural variations in color, texture, mark-making, and abstraction are part of what makes each painting unique.
Begin With a Place
Think of somewhere that has stayed with you.
A city you once called home. A coastline you return to each year. The place where you fell in love. A journey that changed you. A landscape connected to your family. A destination that still feels vivid years later.
Reserve your Abstract Cartography commission and transform the geography of a meaningful place into an original painting created around your story.
[Frame not included]
