Description
As I saw this image in the digital camera viewer, I thought “that’s a painting!” Bo, our labrador (who at the time I’ve painted this is two) was about 12 weeks old. We were playing with my nieces on the big lawn out at my folks. Even as a little waggly, curious puppy, he already had this way of making intense eye contact. I see right into his little doggy soul in this image. I look at this and I am just so sure that this is BJ’s spirit – he came back to us and is just so happy! There’s no way to prove or disprove this and believing it makes me so happy too. This painting is intimate, so it seemed odd to make it really large. It’s just a quarter sheet. I framed it with a lot of mat around it bringing the eye right into his eyes. Painting eyes (so far I’ve just painted dog eyes…) is quite amazing to me. I paint what I see in the reference photo. At first it’s pieces and parts, but softening edges and responding to the niggling that tells me something isn’t just right and there it is, they are no longer painted on, they are real. The incredible mystery of art.
June 2012
