Artist's comment:
When I was in Mexico, I met some wonderful dogs. I took pictures of them and incorporated them into this painting with my former dog Waldo,a fox terrier cross who liked to eat sunglasses.
The tan-colored dog on the left in this painting is a dog I met in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. One night, my husband and I were sitting under a palapa beach shelter watching it rain on the ocean. She came and stayed with us and then followed us after we left the shelter to return to our room. She was obviously pregnant, and I worried that she was going hungry. I wanted so much to bring her back home to the US with us, but we didn't have enough time to do all the red tape it, and since we already had three dogs, the complications at home would make dealing with US Customs officials look easy!
One night, I was told by another tourist that this dog had been staying in an abandoned house which was now being renovated for a restaurant. The construction activity had driven her from her home, and now she just wandered the beaches and slept under the palapas, begging scraps from restaurants and tourists. What would happen when she had her puppies?
We left Playa before the puppies were born, but I've thought about her many times since then.
One thing that happens to me when I travel is I fall in love with new dogs and then I don't miss my dogs at home so much. When I got back from Mexico, I thought about this stray mother dog so much, I finally did this painting with the serape and the folk art angel to ease my mind about all the homeless dogs in Mexico.
