oil pencil and pastel
9″x7.5″
2013
On the “Current & Available” page of my website, I’ve written (in regard to pricings, etcetera) “Potential clients would do well to remember that I’m always a complete sucker for a good sob story. Just remember to make it a GOOD one…..”.
This past weekend’s edition (what would you call this…a “posting”?) of the very popular and remarkably fine blog “My French Country Home” featured Me & Mine. Within a day, a whopping 191 (that’s a lot, actually, for 24 hours…from folks in New Zealand, Africa, Europe, etc.) enthusiastic comments appeared. I was, of course, flattered and, in many cases, touched by the comments…..although I have to admit that I wondered, as usual, why so many folks encounter my work, say its lovely, and then ask me to draw something that’s dead.
Not that I’m exactly complaining, but…..?
In any case, one very nice lady from Charlotte, who’d apparently gathered unto herself the advisability of slinging a “good” sob story my way, did exactly just that. I read her three emails (sent “privately” via the website rather than my friend Sharon’s utterly public blog),and I thought “Nice lady…..I could take a couple of hours on this Sunday afternoon and just DO the danged picture for her”. She’d asked nothing more than if it would be possible to commission a picture, and she was honest enough to simply say that the coffers at home were pretty empty these days. She also wrote rather more than just that (which I won’t repeat)…..but it was enough for me to think “Oh, why not make the lady a little bit happy?…what am I going to do with my Sunday afternoon that’s so damned important?”. This will be a gift to her; obviously, she’ll have to cough up her actual mailing address. I’m not surprised to have eventually discovered that she wanted to give the portrait as a gift to her husband….the nicest folks always seem to be doing something for someone else.
I’ll admit that I was charmed by the photograph’s inclusion of the sort of red-tiled patio/sunroom floor that EVERY Southerner will recognize from practically every Southerner’s Grandmother’s house……too 1940’s-50’s for words.
So, here are her two terriers (“Afternoon Duet”). To read all the comments and thereby realize how grossly underappreciated I’ve been my entire life?….go to: http://myfrenchcountryhome.blogspot.com/