in the house made of dawn ...

well, i’m not quite finished painting my house, but it’s an amazing transition, and totally worth all the time and effort. i’m an early riser, usually up before the sun, and this morning i noticed that the new house color, which is a sort of redwood/red/brown, makes the light inside the house seem warmer at sunrise. i don’t know if it’s the way the new color absorbs the sunlight, or if it’s some kind of refraction or reflection, or if it’s just my imagination, but it’s really nice, and i like it.

it reminds me of an email i got from a woman who commissioned a painting. i’m behind in my commissions, due to the unexpected onset of barkwheats (no complaints, only cheers!), but i’m about to get back on track with them. i’d emailed this particular client a couple of weeks ago to ask what kind of background she was thinking about for the painting of her two awesome dogs. i sent her to my gallery page so she could get an idea of what colors she might be interested in. her response was so beautiful that i’m posting a bunch of it here:

“I’m … looking at all your backgrounds of all your dogs on the website.  One sticks in my mind.  If you go 9 rows down on the gallery page the one in the middle (2nd one from left)– there’s a yellow-ish guy with flopped over ears.  The background is magenta-ish, with some nice depth to it, and looks like a cloudy sunset just before rain.  The Navajo have a ceremony called the Blessing Way that starts like this:

In the house made of dawn
In the house made of sunset light
In the house made of rain clouds…
With beauty before us, we walk
That yellow dog’s background reminds me of that imagery.

What do you think?  Would it work with our knucklehead twins and their colors?  Be honest.  I just dream; you paint what it is you dream.”

this blew me away. what a lady. i can’t WAIT to paint her dogs.