A wonderful dog

A few years ago, about three months after we lost Little Kitty, I offered to take care of a friends dog while she was on vacation for two weeks. We hadn't had the dog for more than a couple of days when I got a phone call asking if I wanted to keep the dog. She and her husband were preparing to make major life style changes and thought we could give the dog a good home.

My husband was in love with her already, and thus after a bit of back and forth, we decided to keep her. At this point in her life she was about 11 years old but still a pretty peppy gal who loved to run and play.

Shadow was part Standard Poodle, but she also had a black tongue. I also met a Portuguese Water Dog that could have been her twin, so who knows what lurked in her DNA? She didn't jump up on people, she didn't lick, and she didn't push open doors. Mostly she stayed off the furniture unless you put a blanket on it and invited her up. The word ride had her dancing for joy, she loved going anywhere in the car.

I love to take photographs, but in all the photos I ever took, I found it difficult to capture her joy and animation. With Shadow in the house I felt safe. She wasn't unfriendly, usually, but kept herself between us and any visitors we had. She had been known to herd people back to their chairs by mouthing the backs of their legs if they went somewhere she didn't think they should be. And one day, when I invited a friend into the bathroom to get a band-aide he needed, she placed herself squarely in front of him and actually growled. Apparently, that was forbidden.

We had Shadow for just a bit over four years. Even on her last day, when she was in a lot of pain and had difficulty breathing, she wanted to go for her morning walk with my husband. I painted this painting long before we had to take her for her final ride. I am so glad that I did.

The following month, we went to a place where you could make your own wine with some friends. We 'created' a Shiraz, called it "Shadow's Shiraz". One of our friends is an artist in his own right, and a graphic designer by trade. He used this painting to create the label. We are still drinking our toasts to Shadow.

Art makes me humble

Occasionally, you look at a piece you have created and think to yourself "this is pretty good." I was getting pretty comfortable with myself, I had been seeing consistent improvement in what I was doing and I hadn't spend a lot of time with my painting friend recently. She keeps me humble all by herself. And then I found this painting.

To back up a little, I stop at consignment shops all the time. Usually just to browse. I keep an eye on the walls looking for frames I can use. Often you can find a nice frame for less than the price of a new one and throw away what's in it.

That's what first caught my eye. This piece had a lovely gold frame. When I went to look at the price, I also looked at what was in it for the first time. Art. Real art. Real original art! All for $65.00. I had never heard fo the artist, but that didn't matter - the talent was obvious and I had to have it.

I was lucky, it had only been in the shop for a day. Another day or two, and I'm sure my opportunity would have been gone. The artist, Fritz Mueller, out of Munich Germany, could be one of two different artists I have learned by searching on the web. Given the birth and death dates, I am supposing father and son. There is no way for me to know which one painted this, or it's real value (more than what I paid, I know), but I don't care.

I have owned this piece for nearly a year. I look at it every day and am humbled by his skill. The detail in the hands, the glass and pitcher and the individual fine white hairs painted in the beard are amazing. It speaks to me and inspires me. One day, I may finally learn which Franz Mueller painted this, I may even learn it's value in the art market. But it doesn't matter, to me, it's priceless.

Getting Permission

As my time to paint is limited, I often paint from photographs, generally ones I have taken, but occasionally I find a something I want to paint and the photo belongs to someone else.

I don't sell my work, at least not at this time, so if I use an image that belongs to someone else, I am not profiting from it. However, I do generally ask permission to paint the image. If I cannot find a way to contact the individual who took the photo, I probably won't paint it. I do occasionally try to reproduce another painting. When I do this, I make sure my painting is noted as a study and reference the original artist and the title of their work. I try very hard to be sensitive to copyright issues and respect others intellectual property.

The painting above was inspired by a photograph taken by a friend while on her honeymoon in the South of France. When I asked her if I could try to paint the sceen, she graciously agreed. The courtyard was filled with pots of flowers, some wonderful crockery in the grilled window and a marvelous wooden door. There was also a fountain for the purpose of obtaining potable water in the courtyard. By the looks of it, it has stood there for many years.

This painting was my first in nearly 20 years with this level of detail. I took the photograph, my canvas and supplies on vacation, and this was one of the ways I relaxed. That and visiting local vintners. Just a note, tasting wine at 10Am shortly after brushing your teeth is not the best way to taste wine.

A family member fell in love with the painting and thus now owns it. She found a wonderful and unusual frame that really sets it off.

I have changed my blog setting so that anyone can now comment. I would love to hear from you.

Rainy days make me think of mud pies

When my grand-daughter was seven, I used to pick her up after school one day a week so we could spend the afternoon together. We did crafts, made popcorn and watched movies or played outside in the yard.

One fine May day, we stopped at nursery and bought some flowers to plant in the yard. After all the flowers were planted, she took the pots and went to play in the pile of loam. I sat in a lawn chair watching and talking to her. After she decided the loam needed watering because she needed to make mud, I had to go get my camera.

Making Mud Pies was my favorite photo of her, and when I decided to try my hand at portrait painting, it was a natural to grab that one. She is a young adult now, but the best compliment she could ever pay me was to ask if she could please have the painting. I have promised it to her in my will, in the mean time, she will have to make do with a photograph of the painting and a JPG for her FaceBook page.

Inspired by a photo

I have family in Finland that I have never met. We have been pen pals for the past 18 years, she is a far better pen pal than I am. She keeps in touch, sends family photos and small gifts occasionally. Over the years, I have watched her children grow up through photos.

The last letter I received had a small photograph of her farm, the barn in the mist of the morning sunrise. It was a small photo but there was something about it that made me want to paint it.

My next letter to her will be a package. In return for all of the small gifts she has sent me over the years, many of then hand-crafted, I am going to send her a painting of her farm. I like it enough to want to keep it and hang it in my house, but that wasn't why I painted it. So I will make myself a print using my own self created process.

I will spend some time outside to get a high quality photo and then I will gesso s piece of canvas pad a couple of times so that it doesn't aborb the ink from my printer and look faded, and will print a copy directly onto the canvas. She will have the original, and I will have a print. I hope that she likes it as much as I do.

A loved and missed companion

For nearly twenty years, I had a lap cat. He never really had a name, he was just "little kitty". Over the course of half a lifetime, I have had many cats, all had names and all died far too young.

When I adopted Little Kitty from the shelter, by not giving him a name, I thought I would protect myself from the heartache of losing him. But in the end, he did have a name, it was Little Kitty, and sometimes we called him Fred!

He was my companion in everything I did. He sat in my lap when I watched TV, read a book, quilted or did cross stitch. He also helped a lot with the last two. If you could call grabbing the thread out of the needle helping. If I was in my studio, so was he. Curled up on some fabric somewhere taking a nap, but always close by. He often asked that I take a break and play with him, and nearly always I did.

He was about three months old when we got him, and shortly after we brought him home he got a respiratory infection. He sat on my lap every night, burning up but trusting me to help him. At night he slept on the bed down by my feet.

When we had had him about a year, my mother in law passed away and we had to drive 1800 miles for the funeral. Little Kitty went to a kennel for a week. He was so happy to see us when we picked him up. For the next six weeks he slept under my arm, curled up in the space above my elbow, holding on with his little paws wrapped around my arm for dear life. He waited for me to come home from work and was never aloof if left alone for very long. He would just drag a pair of my sweat pants out of the closet and leave them lying in the middle of the floor as it to say "You weren't here, I missed you so I grabbed your clothes to stay close."

Little Kitty loved peanuts and chocolate, any kind of chocolate, milk, white and dark. So you had to keep an eye on him when you had any or it would disappear.

It was a hard day when I had to say goodbye. We live so much longer than our pets, there are so many goodbyes, and they don't get any easier. It doesn't stop us from adopting other animals into our lives. They add so much to our existence.

This painting of Little Kitty was done a few years after we lost him. It makes me smile to think of all the joy he brought into my life. I have three cats now, and not one of them is a lap cat. I miss that in the evening.

Geraniums at night

I loved the look of these geraniums lit by the light on the side of the porch at my dad's house. I'm not sure if you get geraniums in the painting, however. It was a lot of fun to do, and I'll keep practising. Today, I am going to spend more time painting. Yesterday I started working on a painting of the fountain on my porch. It's a great day to sit outside and try to capture an image and a feeling.