In hindsight my career as a professional artist truly started 10 years ago when I bought this incredible house in the Dutch countryside which allowed me to work in a studio the size I always dreamed of.
With the purchase of the house came three of the most extraordinary souls I have ever met in my life. They were called Dees, Reen and Lisa. They were feminine, black, full of joy and energy and equiped with an endless capacity to console; three crossbreed labrador dogs.
Through rain, fog and snow, sunny sprinkled mornings and dappled twilight evenings, through winter, spring, summer and autumn, they took me to the endless road and they accompanied me where ever I went; I must have had them by my side for a thousend miles, a million footfals through all the long years.
I had to let go of the last of them four weeks ago. While saying goodbye to Dees, all three of them seemed to be ultimately gone forever…
The single problem with dogs is that they are unable to live up to our human lifespan.
I couldn’t paint for weeks. When finally I started up again every brushstroke reminded me of what was irretrievably lost. In some sort of incomprehensable way they seem to walk through all my latest paintings, at least to me they do.
“To walk with you by the pond in the twilight for one last time…”
The title says it all. One evening while out walking, we found a special place, with a pond and great pine trees and wind and silence and rabbits and deer, a dog’s paradise…
If I could go back in time I would like to be there, just one more time, during that blessed summer evening in the forest with all three of them by my side.
