The subject of this painting, an Italian Grehound named Samson, is owned by a friend, Brandi.  I love these dogs’ doe-like eyes and refinement.  Samson is so fragile-looking and gentle.  He just begs to be cuddled with.

I finished this 6×6 painting of an Italian Greyhound last Sunday.  It was a perfect snowy day outside and I was working in the studio, semi-watching (i.e. taking occasional glances towards) Star Wars and The Sound of Music.  I don’t have a DVD player in my studio, and ordinarily I listen to audio books;  I just have a VCR.  However, VCRs were in existence a lot longer than DVD or HD Streaming have been around, so although I have an ever-growing DVD collection my VHS movie collection is much larger, and of course, I bought all my old, favorite movies as soon as VCRs were invented, so the studio theater remains important.

Here is a poem on the subject of our corporeality.   I like the way Judith Sutphen describes the resignation with which we all see our own bodies.

Living in the Body

Body is something you need in order to stay

on this planet and you only get one.

And no matter which one you get, it will not

be satisfactory.  It will not be beautiul

enough, it will not be fast enough, it will

not keep on for days at a time, but will

pull you down into a sleepy swamp and

demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry

from one day into the next.  Always the

same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same

skin when you in the mirror, and the

same creaky knee when you get up from the

floor and the same wrist under the watchband.

The changes you can make are small and

costly — better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave

eventually.  You know that because you have

seen others do it, others who were once like you,

living inside their pile of bones and

flesh, smiling at you, loving you,

leaning in the doorway, talking to you

for hours and then one day they

are gone.  No forwarding address.

by Joyce Sutphen