PAT'S PAINTING

It's blustery and cold for these parts. Digging through old photos of paintings, I found this one which I'd painted on a winter day just like today's was, but on location outside of Boston.

I was visiting my sister maybe 16 years ago, and this was looking out her dining room window onto her backyard in that rural area. Later that evening after this was painted, we went out to supper, and by the time we got home and pulled into the driveway, it was lightly snowing. The headlights of Marilyn's car shined into the edge of the woods, where we both saw a very, very long thick tail on a very large blonde animal that was leaping over the low stone wall shown in this painting. We looked at each other with the BIGGEST eyes. We were actually scared to jump out of the car and hurry inside.

The next morning, we looked in the mud and snow by the old stone wall and found cat paw prints about the size of a man's fist, maybe a little bigger. Needless to say, I did not go on any long walks while I was there. It was in a beautiful area and only about 40 minutes outside Boston.

When we drove into Boston that weekend to visit the museum, I saw my first bald eagle flying right above us over the interstate --- with a fish in its talons. Amazing! I lived in rural Indiana at the time but had to go to the big city in the east to see wildlife. And over the interstate, no less!

"BIG CAT COUNTRY" Transparent Watercolor on 140# on handmade Nujabi Indian Paper (with no sizing - most difficult paper I've ever tried to paint on) 22 x 15" SOLD