5 JAN 2008The Muttisse

One day as we were on our way to Charleston, we saw a little beagle dog traveling down the riverside with the blues. He was staggering along the side of the road hungry and lost, just looking at the wheels of the cars as they passed by. So we decided to pull over and help the little guy. We were eating hamburgers, and we threw one to him. He quickly gobbled it up and jumped into the car. We told him he was a sweet little angel, but he had to go. Just then he looked up at us with those sad dog eyes, his tail thumping uncontrollably against the car seat. He was so precious—we just couldn’t leave him there all alone, so we took him with us on our journey to Charleston and then back to Savannah. We cleaned him up and named him Muttisse.

He lives with us now, and we love just love the guy. Every Fall, when I see the leaves blowing down the road, it reminds me of the day we found our new friend. I did an oil painting of him, incorporating a collaged map and other articles relating to our adventure shared that day on the road to Charleston. Muttisse is now famous. The painting was sold quickly, and we still sell many prints of him today. His portrait can be found on the web site under Animals.

25 Jan 2008The Night of the Grackle

It was Christmas day, 2006. The weather was dark and stormy outside our cozy Richmond Hill home. We opened the back door to get some air and turned on some beautiful music. Then suddenly we heard a peculiar, loud, metallic bang on the roof. Not knowing what it was, I went out to investigate. I looked up to the gray chimney pipe protruding from the roof, a likely source of the sound, but saw nothing unusual. As I returned, a little perplexed, through the back door, Gabrielle asked, “What is that in the grass?” I ventured out again into the rain and found a beautiful, shimmering black bird, whose feathers shone a striking green to blue iridescence and whose eyes radiated an eerie and celestial moonlight yellow.

After a few moments inspecting the bird in the rain, I noticed it was not moving. I brought a towel to wrap the bird and keep it out of the cold rain. Gabrielle and I went inside and prayed that this little soul not die here on Christmas day. I returned to the bird with tears in my eyes only to find him dead. Gabrielle insisted that we not give up hope, so we continued to pray and stare hopefully out the back door. The rain and cold winds increased. In the meantime, we looked for the bird in an Audubon field guide and discovered that it was not a raven as we had at first suspected, but a grackle. After two hours of watching, I brought another warm towel to wrap the helpless bird, but still no movement. Then I got an umbrella to cover it more effectively. Immediately as I opened the umbrella, the intense, yellow eyes of the grackle darted up and met mine. We stared at each other in curiosity. He began flapping his wings and, in an instant, hopped up and flew away.

That night I was inspired to paint a crazy abstract bird painting.