“Cat in Winter”

Yes, that’s my favorite cat, Picasso. This painting is kind of a mash-up of recent plein air paintings done out in the orchard and a favorite photo of Picasso. I hadn’t planned on doing a cat painting this week. The original plan was to paint a still life with yellow roses on a crazy scarf. But when I set it up on my work table I stopped and signed — what? Paint yet another still life that galleries around here don’t want to hang? Ach! My very best-selling gallery closed its doors permanently this fall. Sigh — may as well paint something I love: my cat! So that’s how this one got started.

Here’s a stack of the plein air orchard paintings that inspired the background. Each is 10×20″.

Originally I had Picasso sitting on a plain windowsill. But it was just too blah, too boring, too depressing. Give me a good struggle, a good surprise! I decided to use the scarf I’d originally thought of using with the yellow roses. I like that it helps add to the depth of the painting. Your eye moves from the cat to the cloth, out to the tree branches and out to the birds — and back again. Kind of a fun visual journey.

As depressing as it is to have a super-gallery close, I keep reminding myself that maybe something even better will come along. You know how something can seem really bad at the time — but in the end it works out better than you could have imagined? My life’s full of those things.