Art is experimentation

I don't know whether to tell this to you straight or make up a story about how this sequence evolved.  But if anything, art is experimentation and art school can be the ruin of the artist: two lessons learned.

So here's the story.  The first picture here is a painting I did.  Perhaps it is sort of "dark",  the image emerged as woman holding out something.  It kind of happened that way.

  Someone who saw this little painting suggested the song " Ode to Billie Joe", a ballad written in the 60's by Bobby Gentry in which a woman throws her baby off a bridge.  Sorry that wasn't on my mind when I painted it.  

At the time I did this I was taking a class at the Naive art museum here in Nice (Musee d'art naif) and the teacher took the painting from me and turned it upside down.  

This below is the original painting turned upside-down. 

"Well", said this fanciful instructor, "I see a dog!   I see a big afghan hound"... and everyone else in the class saw it too.  "Why don't you take that a bit further and do a series for me". 

 Now this is akin to subversion from an art teacher but I didn't think anything of it at the time.  I hadn't wanted a series of dogs but what the heck!  So I went home and obediently did two more "dogs" until I caught myself in a lie and couldn't go on, even to please her. 

 Still, these portraits have a certain irony that I like…. so now I enjoy them.

 This is the dog's master on the neckline, under the thrall of his huge hound….

These works are done on oil paper using my technique of inks with "resist" that…. as I say….I am sure I can claim as my own discovery.