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So Update, I know the family of the kid that stole the paintings. The smaller painting that my son did is fine. The larger one that I did had the wooden slats on the canvas cracked and big tears to the canvas itself. I texted the father and let him know what happened.

As I suspected, it was a teenage kid (17) who took it. He didn't have a plan or goal. He saw something neat and decided to take it. I dealt with plenty of short-sighted behavior like this when I was an officer.
I know how to handle this.

It was a cordial discussion. I've learned from experience that I'm much likely to get my point across (and I'm much more menacing) if I keep my tone level and emotions in check.

The father was apologetic. The mother was furious. And the son broke into (...)

tears a few times.

Kids are insecure and are often "performing" for an unseen audience trying to define themselves. That's what drives this behavior. They're also physiologically incapable of understanding consequences.

It's a painful process to lay out what their actions mean about themselves, but it's never destructive. I think he'll be better off after this experience.

The dad offered to pay for the cost of the supplies, we got a quote from a tree trimming service that's going to remove some of the branches so no one can climb up to our veranda as easily, and he offered to buy the painting outright for what I think is a fair price.

I told him I didn't want to sell it to him if the painting was just going to end up thrown away or kept in storage. The dad said that he will ensure that it's somewhere visible in the house as a constant reminder for his son.

I'm satisfied with this conclusion. The kid learned a valuable lesson. My kids will feel safer with the tree trimmed. I think it was also important for my kids to see this kid tearfully apologize to them in person. There was real remorse.

No one's future is ruined and no relationships are soured. I think everyone has been made whole.

The painting itself wasn't done. It's just a bunch of smears and me experimenting with making my own paint with my son. It can do some interesting things with reflections. It's about a meter tall, but the paint was quite expensive at this point.

I wanted to experiment with it more.

I know it's lame but I was probably going to turn it into an abstract #go board using painters tape to set the lines. My vision was to have the pieces change colors depending on how the light hits it with a chaotic color in the background to underscore the "order" of go

We learned a lot about how to layer the paint to get the light to reflect the way we want it to. This will probably result in a better piece now that I have to redo it, but I'm having a hard time getting motivated to start the tedious process of layering again to recreate that reflection effect.