A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the painting Fred Elslager had commissioned for his girlfriend needed to convey just four.

Will you marry me?

Elslager had wanted to propose to Amanda Alzate in a special way.

"We both love going to First Fridays in Lancaster and have been going since we started dating in September of 2008," Elslager, 25, of Columbia, said.

And they knew artist Liz Hess, who owns Liz Hess Gallery. He'd previously bought Alzate a print of one of the artist's paintings.

So he asked Hess about doing a painting and if he could propose at her gallery Friday.

The result was life imitating art.

The painting depicts Elslager on bended knee, ring in one hand and the red umbrella that Hess features in her paintings in his other hand, opened and resting on his shoulder.

Elslager arranged to have their families along. That was a first, but even so, Alzate said, it didn't give her an idea of what Elslager had planned.

They ate dinner and checked out some galleries.

"When we got to Liz Hess Gallery, that's when my heart was really starting pumping," Elslager said Monday.

He told Alzate he had a painting made for her and directed her to the easel on which it sat, draped in cloth.

Let's have Alzate pick up the story:

"He grabbed my hand and told me he had a picture painted for me. I was like, wow, that's really special," she said.

She began to unveil it.

"In the split second it took me to unveil the painting and turn around again," she said, "he had gotten down on his knee and took the ring out. … He asked me, and I immediately said yes."

Family and friends cheered and clapped. A pianist played. But Alzate said she was oblivious, having developed a sort of tunnel vision.

"I felt like when he proposed, it was just like me and him in the room," said Alzate, 25, who teaches seventh-grade science at Manheim Township Middle School.

As it turns out, Hess' gallery has served as the canvas for two other proposals and a wedding.

None of the people was aware of the other events, Hess said.

"I've never advertised or promoted the gallery as a venue for this. But people have come to me," Hess said.

She's not sure why.

"I don't know. A lot of people said that my pictures are romantic. … Whether they give off any sort of amorous vibe, I can't tell you," she said.

"A lot of my paintings evoke mood because I paint a lot of weather (and) I feature a red umbrella," she said.

With rain or snow often featuring in her work, she said, "The mood is subdued and soft."

Well, red is the color of romance.

It would be nice, then, to wrap this up with a romantic story about the red umbrellas, right?

Nope.

"Friends think this is a pathetic story, because the reality of the birth of the umbrella as a signature is actually far more boring than what my friends think I should make up and tell people," Hess said.

Some years ago in Italy, she said, "I was painting a woman feeding the seagulls by the lagoon there in Venice."

Snow was falling.

It was a "leaden picture" with grays, browns and blues, she said. She liked the painting, but decided it was too somber.

"So I thought, since it's snowing, I can justify an umbrella and color," she said.

She planned to include the picture in a show, but it was purchased before she even got to hang it.

The next year, she went to France and incorporated a red umbrella in four pictures. Those were the first to sell in a subsequent exhibit.

"So that's when the light bulb went off in my head. … The signature found me," she said. "I did not find it."

And our couple? They're planning a wedding next year in June or July.

dnephin@lnpnews.com

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