"POTD"

Putting on the Dog is an annual fundraiser to benefit the Humane Society's animal shelter in Towns and Union counties in the North Georgia mountains. This is the painting I'm donating as an auction item for the event to be held September 28, 2013.

Shortly after we bought a house on Lake Nottely, a puppy - a dirty, mangy, starving puppy - came up on our deck, looked in our window and then left. Later in the morning while we were working in the yard this puppy peaked around the corner of the house and very shyly came towards our outstretched hands. It was love at first sight! It was my husband's 60th birthday so we named our new puppy "Sixty". 

Sixty loved to go for boat rides and we would stop at this island in the middle of Lake Nottely and let Sixty and his "brother" Cody explore the shore and the woods.  A couple months ago, after 14 years, Sixty let us know it was time for him to leave us - ironically on our daughter's birthday. Words can't describe what a special member of our family Sixty was or how much we miss him. 

This huge 14x11 canvas felt like painting on a billboard compared to what I usually do! 

I've painted variations of this pot many times, but never this large. Except for a bit of smoothing on the shading of the pot, it was done entirely with various shaped palette knifes. I used light modeling paste so there's lots of texture. It started out as an experiment but received good comments in my open studio so I'm satisfied with it.

It looks very nice in it's simple black floater frame.

It does need a title, hmmmm.