Sunday, May 4, 2014

Jasper

It was perhaps the first actual warm day of spring, and I was walking through Central Park with my camera.  I hoped to capture the sunny riot of early forsythia, and the enchantingly gloomy drooping heads of the hellebore flowers in the shadows beneath the brambles.  The trees were all still bare and austere, but the sun dazzled and lightened my heart.  Between the trees and across a lawn, a brilliant copper darting thing caught my attention; I tracked it down and met Jasper, and his owner, who was clearly filled with a quiet pride over his dog's extraordinary beauty. Jasper is a Hungarian Vizsla; this extraordinary breed is a thousand years old, and was the hunting dog of Magyar tribal warlords and centuries of Hungarian aristocrats.








Jasper's owner kindly let me take quite a few photographs of Jasper, and these became the visual references for the painting you see here.  I have taken Jasper out of his NewYork home, and placed him in my own childhood, in my memories of summers spent in England, and the broad gentle lands and poetic brooding skies of my family's home.  For this placement, the Romantic English artist Thomas Gainsborough provides an appropriate reference.  I hope you enjoy the painting- I certainly enjoyed creating it.

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