Jimmy & Jackson & Upstate

My friend Teresa, who I have been friends with for almost 25 years, lost 2 very special cats.

It's the kind of situation that needed a gift painting.

Of course I left it to the last minute...and last-minute for oil painters means factoring in lots of drying time.

This is about a 10-hour painting, and I had to do it all at once over about 48 hours because it's a wet-in-wet painting, no dry layers. I needed to do it while the paint was still open.
Both cats showed up very strongly at the beginning of the painting, they were very happy about it, then about halfway through they disappeared.

Even though this is a rainbow bridge painting, the cats and Dru (thanks Dru!) felt no rainbow things were needed.

9x12 oil

Pebbles wanted to pose with the painting:

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Today I took Amtrak up to Rochester to see Teresa for the weekend.

It's a long train ride- about 7 hours- but since I brought oil paint, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of airline security.

The train trip is a lot longer but was cheaper than flying and is generally no-stress.

Teresa loved the painting.

She lives in a gorgeous area, right on Lake Ontario, and she isn't too far from the finger lakes region.

In the evening we took a short walk around one of the parks, I forgot which one it was but it's nice wetlands.  I do get into nature a lot but what I almost never get is large open space-- which I miss sometimes and I really enjoyed upstate.

Minnie

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I stayed in Teresa's basement.

I LOVE Teresa's basement!

It's my kind of space- a little weird and very comfortable.

It has 4 main large rooms plus I'm not sure how many secret rooms!

The secret rooms are awesome!

Also there is a disused claw foot bathtub with cellos in it, a pencil sharpener in the bathroom, a whole entire extra kitchen, a piano, and a very old computer that Teresa holds on to because it has a large collection of Steely Dan on it.

It is good to see my friend and have a bit of an environment change.