The Story Behind the Painting
Sometimes painting a pet ends up being a race against time, even if you don't realize it when you start.
This one started the second I saw a picture of our friends’ new Havanese-mix puppy, Duffy. He was so ridiculously cute, I knew I was going to paint him.
On the day I was able to deliver the finished painting, I was nervous (as always). Would they recognize him? Did my painting really capture him?
There he was, paws up on the windowsill barking at the strangers arriving. I couldn’t get a good look at him from my vantage point, and I was getting more nervous as we knocked on the door. Well, in the time it took me to paint him, Duffy had grown up and gone for a haircut; all his fluffiness was gone — trimmed right down to the skin!
But our friend’s reaction was all the reassurance I needed: she looked at the painting, then at me, then back to the painting. “It’s Duffy!” She moved some knickknacks around to place the painting on her mantel.
It turned out the painting was less of a current portrait and more of a time capsule, catching Duffy’s extra-fluffy puppy stage. A memory saved.