Rex
(no, we didn't get a new dog)
I haven't posted a whole lot on any platform over the past little while. Between work being so busy I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and picking up the pieces from losing Soleil, it's been all about simply getting through each day.
Three weeks ago, after we lost Soleil, I felt utterly empty and unmoored. Still do, to be honest. Work, in this respect, has been a necessary, overriding distraction, forcing my mind away from the dark places it seeks to go. There has simply been no time for self-indulgent self-pity.
I did wonder however if I would ever feel the desire to pick up a paintbrush and create.
Enter Deus ex machina, otherwise known as Rex.
Rex was half-finished on my easel when we lost Soleil. He had been commissioned by a friend of a friend, as a gift to her friend who had just lost this lovely German Shepherd. In the wake of Soleil's passing, I found myself compelled to finish this painting because of a deep compassion I felt for a stranger who had suffered the same sort of loss. Rex - the painting - is now in Vancouver and will soon be with the woman who loved him in his physical form.
And thanks to Rex, I got back on the horse, so to speak, and I am carving out time to paint every evening, no matter how busy I am.
To anybody who is reading this and thinking just get over it already, I offer no apology. A heart, given to a dog, grows larger by virtue of scar tissue.
