I feel ya’

I had a pretty productive week on the painting front. Not because I was disciplined or anything like that. But I did get a little surge of inspiration.

Inspiration 1

On Tuesday, a work friend (I work with awesome people) put on Facebook that she had to say good bye to her heart horse, Smoke, at 32 years old (this is very old in horse years.) A while ago I visited Katie during off-work hours and she was kind enough to let me have a horse fix by grooming a couple of her horses. I believe I groomed Smoke during this period, but if I didn’t, I enjoyed looking at him and probably gave him a horse cookie.

Katie has another horse for riding, because Smoke has long been past the age where he could be ridden. But when I met him, he was a complete gentleman. So easy to handle and with a lovely coating of mud that came right off, indicating that he received regular grooming. For an old horse, he looked great. And it’s a testament to Katie’s love that she kept him in such great health to the end of his life.

As I pondered this story and my own memories, I wondered what I could do to help. Words always seem so inadequate in these situations. Then it occurred to me… she’d probably like a painting of Smoke. So I stole of the pictures she posted and got to painting.

It came together pretty quickly and I popped it in the mail the next day. The post office must be working double time, because she got it the day after that! She reports that she loves it. I hope she knows how sympathetic I am!

Inspiration 2 (deadline)

If I’m going to turn in this painting to the show (it won’t win, but I’d like to try) I need to work on it. The deadline is May 15.

Inspiration 3

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had a bunch of photos digitized by ScanCafe. This has necessitated a huge reorganization of my computer files. Not only that, I am “cleaning up” the files as well. Many thousands of duplicate, bad, or pointless photos have been discarded. But occasionally I’ll come across one and I’ll think, “Oh, that’s a painting.”

Thus these two paintings were inspired.

And with that, it’s back to my plain life of petting the dog and being confused by the cats.