My Three Brothers

My Three Brothers

 

This seems like an odd name for a painting that consists of two boys and a dog. The truth is the dog was my constant companion while my two brothers were older, with lives that didn't very often include a small sister. I was more of an annoyance than a playmate.

We lived in the watershed of Benbrook Lake in Texas when I was between four and eight. Occasionally there could be found a rattlesnake crawling through the short grass and dust of suburban Ft. Worth. I asked my mother if she had been concerned with letting me play in the backyard alone (in the fifties children played outside in groups called neighborhoods). Her response was that I was never alone--that Tippy was always at my side or waiting patiently by any door I had previously gone through.Tippy was old by the time I was wandering around needing protection and she did not last past my eighth birthday. She was ill and my parents had to make the unbearable decision to not allow her to suffer but to a seven year old it was a decision sure--in my sometimes still seven year old heart, I have yet forgiven. Tippy was the first "person" to die in my life and I sit here fifty years later with tears rolling down my face. Tippy was there, watching over me and her loss made me vulnerable--I still am.

My brother with the beautiful red hair has been gone for more that ten years now. And the brother with the blond hair lives far away in Texas.

This was the first "pet painting" I painted and it resides on my sunroom wall.

My memories of all my pets, my farm animals, my friends and relatives that have filled my life, and with their deaths left gaping holes, reside in my heart and on my painted canvases.