There is a very sweet dog who has shown up in my yard 3 times in the past 48 hours. I'm familiar with this dog. He has visited several times before.
Every time he sees me he sacks me like a line backer, does a series of jumps and hops that would make Tigger jealous and then hugs my leg in a death grip that it takes two people to pry loose.
If I'm not outside he juts patiently waits, circling from my back door to my front door, flops down and whines quietly while he waits to see me again.
He is very obviously auditioning to be "my" dog.
And under other circumstances it wouldn't even be a question, I'd take him in a heartbeat.
But the reality of it is, this dog has an owner, whom I have patiently returned this dog to about a half dozen times. My big dog is territorial, my little dog is scared and our cats don't know what to think.
We also rent and neither our lease nor city laws allow us to have any more animals at this time.
The dog, of course, doesn’t understand any of this. He just thinks that if he keeps coming back and he’s friendly enough, excited enough, affectionate enough, that maybe, just maybe this time we will say yes.
And it’s hard because he is such a very good dog, and we want to say yes, but we can’t because our home just is not the right fit.
And understanding that, how I could love this dog that isn’t mine so very much and still accept that he was not meant to be mine has taught me something very important about art.
As artists, we put ourselves out there a lot- art fairs, shows, galleries, sales pitches, social media posts how many nos do we get before someone says yes?
And we do it again and again.
I don’t do many shows/exhibitions because most of them are long distance and while a few accept work shipped to them, the fees tend to be too high to make it worthwhile, but just a time or two I’ve taken a chance on submitting a piece I thought was perfect for a show, only to be told “no”.
At the time I didn’t understand it, now I think I do. They were good pieces, they matched the theme, but taken in context with the other work, they just weren’t the right fit.
And that’s ok, because there will be somewhere else where they DO fit.
In the meantime, at least I saved money on the postage.
image is my original painting "Anthem of the Othered" 16'x20' acrylic on canvas inspired by Kermit the Frog's "Being Green"