Blue Velvet Bay

I'd come across this horse in a pen at the side of the highway and I was so taken with the amazing color of the horse and the brilliant red tin of the building, that I had to get some photos. Even then, I was picturing this horse with his glorious color and the red building in the background as a future painting. I posted one of the photos on my sidebar labeled (ha ha) Blue Roan? - making all the horsey people wince - and I wrote this about the photographs I'd taken.

I've been letting this painting percolate until this past week. On my Wednesday "demo day" I did two mock-ups (pictured left) neither of which pleased me compositionally. I felt the hues of the foreground were about right, but I wanted a more abstracted painterly look, not a classic landscape. In the mock-up, the red building was taking over - and for me this painting was all about the horse. I came up with the final layout while drawing on the panel in chalk, as I did not want to be doing a paint-over this close to show time.

I thought I'd finished - and even took photographs. And looking at the photos on my computer realized the eye, muzzle and head were too detailed and fussy, so I went back and changed them to the version seen here. It's another large one: 30 x 34, on deep cradle panel.

This is the last painting for the March show at the Heritage Center Gallery. The show will open Monday, March 1 and run through the 31st. Here's the original look at the horse and red shed.

Calico Pie

Acrylic on Masonite
11" x 15"
195.00















A long, long time ago, when I lived in Philadelphia, I wanted to adopt a kitty. I decided to go about the adoption in a sort of "chance operation" mode - so I looked through the must find home ads in the classifieds. The color or breed of cat made no difference to me as I believed there were no bad cats.

The first person I called was a charming young lady with a strong Hispanic accent. She had found a young female tabby and brought her into her home only to find that her two fully grown cats hated the newcomer to the point of physical battles. After a few weeks and no improvement, she put the newcomer up for adoption.

When I went to her house to pick up the kitty, she told me that she loved cats above all other animals and felt that they were so sweet that they should all be given the last name of "Pie". Samantha Pie, Tabby Pie, Fluffy Pie... etc. When I told her this would be my only cat - or first cat in Philadelphia, she said I should call her Una Pie, or number one pie... And I did...

Una Pie lived to be a fine fat old tabby cat, and all of my cats from then on have been sweet as pie.

The haunting...

Frosty - and His Best Friend...

acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24"
private collection











This is an old painting and I post it here out of a strange motivation. I think of myself as a very level-headed and pragmatic person, not given to superstition or unreasonable anxieties - and yet - I find that I rarely paint my own cats when they are alive. I rarely even photograph them. Somehow it's as if loving them too much will jinx them. So many times in the past it was always my favorite cat who went missing - or developed some rare disease. Is there guilt involved? Surely. I've been a rescuer and fostered cats all my life and because I've always tried to love them equally - and failed - do I somehow think it's a punishment? No - but...


Perhaps it's due to just missing them, perhaps it's the desire to offer a form of immortality; perhaps it's all of these things and I over analyze. This image of Frosty with a favorite toy says much about my need to think of him as having companionship out there in the great hereafter. And so, like Colette, I memorialize them when they are gone. (Colette used to recite the names of her dead cats - or she wrote of it - I'm not sure.)