"Sunsets with Jill", 9x12, cats, paintings of cats, sunsets, Cedar Key

SOLD

"Sunsets with Jill", 9x12

And so Jill's legacy to the art world lives on.

What am I talking about, you ask?

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you may recall that I took a lovely trip last spring to Cedar Key, Florida for a weekend getaway with my hubby. There were absolutely no accommodations to be found in town, but as luck would have it, a chance walk into a realtor's office provided the much needed getaway accommodation  we'd been hoping for.

When we saw the home, we knew we had hit paydirt! It was absolutely lovely, beautifully decorated, and came with its own dock and golf cart! Yup, life is good sometimes.

So we began the weekend with a trip to a local seafood restaurant for some take-out, which we brought back to our "getaway" so that we could enjoy the sunset from our prime location, as we ate our meal on the deck.

But seconds after sitting down to my salmon plate, a very strange looking cat meandered up to me and plopped herself down right onto my lap! When I say strange, I am not exaggerating. This was probably the homeliest cat I had ever seen, and I'm a cat lover.

The long and the short of it was that the cat wanted my salmon dinner much more than my affection and the two of us began a cat and mouse game over who would end up with the salmon. I finally gave into her demands forking over piece after piece of savory salmon pate. From that point on, I was sunk. She never let me alone for the rest of the weekend, and at one point I had to cast her over the side of the dock to get her out of my paints! I had set up on that dock the entire weekend, and probably turned out about half a dozen paintings from that one location- sunrises, sunsets and everything in between.

So the last night we were there, I painted Jill doing her sunset walk, and the painting sold almost as soon as I posted it here on my blog.

Seems other people love homely cats, too!

This painting is also sold and was commissioned by the owner of the lovely home where we stayed. Interestingly, Jill the cat does not live there. She only visits when people eat salmon on the deck.

To read more about Jill and see photos of her in real life, go to my earlier post which is here.

"Catwalk", 8x10, oil on board, Vincent Van Gogh, Sunsets, cats, nasty cats, Cedar Key, plein air

SOLD

"Catwalk", 8x10, oil on board

What do you do when a cat struts into your plein air sunset painting?

You paint him, of course!  (Or her.)

In this case it was a "her" and what a character she turned out to be.

We rented a home on Cedar Key for a few days recently, just to get away from it all. Cedar Key is an Old Florida- type town that hasn't changed a whole lot in a hundred years.

There are gorgeous sunsets and sunrises each day, mud flats and oyster beds galore, and plenty of decent fresh seafood to boast of on Cedar Key. On one particular gorgeous Florida evening, we brought home a take-out of fresh oysters, clams and blue crabs from a local restaurant. That's when we met "Jill", the ugly and nasty cat that lived next door to our rental.

Sadly, I confess that I am to blame for the fact that we could not get rid of her after that night, because I was the one that could not resist that miserable face and so I fed her some seafood.

Jill then attached herself to me like a parasite, and after that, I literally could not paint or enjoy the sunset on the deck without Jill by my side. One particular night I decided to paint the sunset. The gnats were really annoying, and so I determined to do a quick little piece that would give me notes for a larger work in the studio.

My efforts, however, were interrupted continuously by Jill, who definitely wanted a piece of the action.

Jill made her way up the deck as though she owned it, like a model on a catwalk, showing off the latest Ralph Lauren masterpiece. Without warning, Jill suddenly dove onto my wet palette, and  with an equal lack of warning I unceremoniously dumped Jill off the deck and onto the mudflats directly below.  Lucky for her it was  low tide.

Jill was not to be deterred, however. She cleaned herself off, and made her way back to me, not to be put off by a little oil paint, mud, and rude human treatment. Eventually after being ignored, she settled down and made herself comfortable in a chair by my side, but not before I finally gave in and stuck her into my sunset painting.

The painting is rather Van-Gogh-esque, probably because the contretemps between myself and Jill was enough to make me want to cut off her tail and my own ear. The latter of which was a direct result of the meowing that occurred each night when I shut her out of our vacation rental without nary another piece of crabmeat to speak of.

I hope if you ever visit Cedar Key, you will enjoy its beauty, minus the benefit of a diabolical cat named Jill.