How is a painting like a cat?

I'm so happy that Keyhole has finally found a good home. I painted this 22x32.5" acrylic painting in 2008 for my Portage show - "portage" being the name I gave to a system for hanging paintings on unstretched canvas that I had developed that year. It turned out to be a wonderful show which still brings back warm memories. A lot of my friends came to the opening and we all went out for a late supper afterward. It remains my most successful show ever - I sold three paintings at the opening, and two or three more during the run of the show. During the opening, a lot of people told me they were drawn to Keyhole. Yet, not only did it not sell at that show, but in all the months since then, it still hadn't sold. So, I was beginning to think I'd have it forever.

Enter my friend Amy, who designs jewelry, fosters cats and kittens, and appreciates art. She fell in love with Keyhole, and a match was made. A word about Amy: she fostered our fabulous Maine coon cat, Gemma, as a kitten. Gemma was one of a large number of cats found in a feral colony north of here. As a kitten, Gemma was just about as wild as a bug, but you'd never suspect that now, and that is largely a testament to the wonderful, loving fostering she received at Amy's. Amy doesn't foster cats and kittens with a view to just getting them placed as soon as possible - she matches them very carefully with suitable homes where they'll fit in and be loved and appreciated, as Gemma is by our family. There are lots of cats at Amy's, for whom no such home has materialized, and that's ok. They can just stay there for as long as it takes.

Strangely, that's very much the way I feel about my paintings. They're not "like my children" - there are way too many of them, for one thing! If I felt they were like children, I could never let them go. Also, as an adoptive mother (our son James is adopted), I use that word extremely judiciously, even as applied to pets. But I do care about my paintings in a such way that they almost seem alive to me. I like to think of them being part of someone's home, and their worldview. This is the only way I know how to change the world.