My Dog Lobo
Friday, September 12, 2008 at 04:49PM 
Last night I admitted to an artist friend over dinner that I was considering pitching it all for a career as a portrait painter of dogs and cats.
The last time I was as tempted to make a major career change was when I was backpacking through Yosemite National Park and stopped at one of the High Sierra Camps to take a swim and have lunch. These camps provide beds and meals in the high country for people who want the multi-day experience of backpacking without carrying 25-40 pounds on their backs. It was there that I met Lucille, a native New Yorker who was spending her summer living and working at one of the camps. One of her duties - get ready to be struck with a lightning rod of self doubt about your own career choice as I did - was to make the sack lunches and to decorate the brown bags that they came in. Can you imagine? Such bliss. A day for Lucille might also include the cleaning of a pit toilet, or chasing off a grumbly bear but STILL. Who would mind such interruptions? I begged her to let me decorate a few and within moments found myself lost in a spacey, arty haze, demanding more colors from her well used box of nubby little crayons, scrawling pictures of bears and berries and cautionary diagrams of poison ivy. I was unstoppable, and probably a little unbearable.
Of course, I returned to my day job a few days later, and haven't really questioned much career wise since. Until, that is, Lobo came along. After a few quick sketching sessions I realized that I could be perfectly content drawing or painting pictures of people's pets. Why not? I do live in Chelsea, after all, where dogs and cats rule and non stroller-bound children are rarely sighted. Oh wait, I already have a job. OK, maybe just on weekends.... Maybe just my pets.....
Reader Comments (4)
Lovely to learn about a serious pet aficionado in Chelsea. You may at some point happen on a three-legged skinny dog, hanging out with either a tall young man and a little boy or a young man in a wheelchair often accompanied by his wife and young twins (double stroller). They're all near the Whole Foods Market on Seventh Avenue. The young men are my nephews, their dog, the luckiest pup in the pound when they adopted him. All great subjects for your pencil.
I have to agree....You would have a LOT of devastated people out there had you stop designing fabric and stick to only paper and pooches.
Weekends...weekends, we can work with. ;)
Of course this is the point where we should all hit you up for drawings of our pups, and _then_ tell you to not stop designing!
I have spent the better part of an hour perusing your blog--it's delightfully addicting--and with this post it's like you've read my mind. I just HAVE to share a link to this picture of my dog Chance.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaiwa_4/2055473251/