The "new" first day is here. It's so great to be back!
I finished this painting last night, and I'm very pleased with it. It's a painting of a blue tick coon hound, my very own Molly, with whom I shared many loving, though exasperating years. As is evident in her haughty pose, Molly was definitely "better than you," and she never for a moment let you forget it. I think her personality was more cat-like than dog. I adopted her while attending a local outdoor art show, where a dog-adoption organization had a public-service booth. She was found along the highway by a selfless volunteer whose entire life and income was spent rescuing and rehabilitating homeless dogs and cats. When found, one of her back legs was literally dangling behind her (she had been shot), and she appeared to be a walking skeleton (I saw photos of her when she was first found). A volunteer vet removed her leg and foster parents got her into physical shape. Her previous owner was located, a hunter, who claimed not to know how she was shot; I don't know if charges were ever filed against him, but they ought to have been. Perhaps from who knows what sort of awful experiences she had had in her short life (she was thought to be between one and two years old when I adopted her), perhaps because of her hound breed, she never did fully bond with me or any other human -- or anything for that matter. She was always aloof, distant, haughty, oh-so-beautiful, naughty (she ate I don't know how many shoes), and completely lovable. Even after several years of being without her, we miss her terribly but are also so glad to have been able to be a part of her life.
I present you: Molly. 8x10" on gessoed 1/8" thick hardboard, with black recessed 1.5" sides. $150.00, plus shipping costs, as usual available for purchase at my website, http://www.dottiedracos.com/, on the originals page.
2 comments:
What a hauntingly magnificent portrait of your Molly!! Her "soul" comes through in those eyes! You have truly painted a masterpiece here, in my humble opinion! I am amazed and wonderstruck by this astonishingly beautiful artwork! Dottie, what a gift you have! Bravo!
Thank you so much! You know, you're the very first person who has ever appreciated that painting (well, I love it, obviously). I don't understand why - maybe it's because she was a very unusual dog; I just don't know. I don't remember if I mentioned much about Molly in my blog (which, by the way, you made me realize that I haven't been posting to it in a long time!!!), but she was quite an interesting character. . . (Well, I just went and re-read what I wrote - and here's "the rest of the story":)
She was so beautiful, too, over her entire body. She had a patchwork-quilt of a coat, with distinct patches of black, grey, brindle, and, of course, blue ticking, overlapping each other, just like a quilt all over her body. We often wondered what her missing leg must have looked like.
What I also didn't say in the description in the blog entry that you read is that in the end, Molly escaped one too many times, and someone (I guess a hunter, although we never knew) shot and killed her. You wouldn't believe the lengths I went to in order to keep Molly fenced in, but again, she had a mind of her own -- and just loved to run too much to be fenced in. The painting I did of her is from a photo I took before her second run-in with near-death took place. After that photo, during one of her escapades, she was bitten by what the vet said was a rattlesnake (we lived in the south at that time); and although the vet said she had almost a zero chance of survival, I asked him to go ahead and try. Well, she did survive, but after she healed up, she had this ridiculously huge cavity on the top side of the center of her head, where she had lost all the muscles, where the snake bit her. It healed over normally but was really obvious to everyone but us. We just got used to seeing her like that, and she didn't to mind it. It was so large that my daughter, who was just a child, used to pour spoonfuls of water into it when Molly was resting.
Anyway, (don't know why I told you all that!), she was a most exasperating sweetheart, and I am so glad that you appreciated her painting. There'll never be another Molly. Thanks so much for your comments; I really do appreciate them.
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