art imitating life… or the brutal reality that the animal kingdom is not as cute as a whimsy painting

I have been working on my painting The Beagle and the Bunny all weekend long. I am almost finished with the majority painting as I am getting ready to “tinker” with it a bit. This is the process where I over-analyze colors and wonder if it is any good in the first place. Vernal says she likes the background colors, but I am not convinced and I would like to make them a little more subtle.

The painting has taken place in our family room, which is now where our beagle Molly sleeps. We put a baby gate in the door way, so she can’t leave that room in the middle of the night to bark at our neighbor’s cat from the living room which is close to our bedrooms. I am guessing that Molly has had plenty of time these last few days to see the painting of her standing at peace with the bunny next to her. If she could talk; she would probably be criticizing my efforts – my face doesn’t look that boxy, my tail’s not that straight, that’s not what grass looks like, and I would never stand idle next to a bunny, because I would chase it down and kill and bring it back to you, so that you would know that I am a worthy hound.

With a look of disgust on her face, Vernal told me, as I walked in the door after work, that Molly has something for me in the backyard. I guess minutes before I came home, Molly decided to demonstrate the reality of her relationship with the bunny. There it lay dead in the corner of our backyard trapped by the fence. It was a very large bunny, maybe too large to find an easy escape route through the fence.

As we explained to our 2 year old, Molly hurt the bunny. She wasn’t playing nice. I don’t think Goose has been confronted with death or the idea of dying yet.