A 48-by-60-inch oil painting marking Celina's 150th anniversary is finished, and the city that commissioned it plans to show it in an exhibit.
The work is by Rob Jordan, who grew up a few miles away in Gunter. It is a collage of roughly 30 portraits and landmarks drawn from the town's past. Jordan started in March and estimates he put more than 200 hours into it, working from historical photographs supplied with help from the Celina Area Heritage Association Museum.
Among the people in the painting are Professor Edward Sewell Doty, who ran the nearest Black school, in McKinney, during segregation; J. Fred Smith, who played a major part in laying out Celina's downtown square; and longtime high school football coach G. A. Moore. Landmarks include the water tower, the railroad and a Methodist church that was later converted into city hall.
Jordan said the research taught him that Celina had moved. The original town sat two or three miles west of today's downtown, he said, and relocated to be next to the railroad.
An orange sunset low on the horizon is meant to stand for both the parts of Celina's history that are gone and the growth the city is seeing now, Jordan said. "There's a bright future tomorrow, and I wanted to capture that with Celina's growth that they're experiencing," he said.