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“Lexi”
Day 306 of my artwork retrospective
This magnificent Doberman Pinscher is by far the most beautiful one I was privileged to paint during my career as an animal portraitist. And back in the 1970s and 1980s I painted more of that breed than I can remember. I’d set up a table at the Doberman shows, usually in Miami, and would soon be preparing boards for several commissions.
In those long-ago days, there wasn’t much competition, but even so, I never took a single commission lightly. I could always guaranteed my finished portrait would bear an unmistakable resemblance to my subject. Satisfaction guaranteed.
I must admit, it was a tad challenging to be painting several of the same breed, all of them black with tan/rust points, and be sure to make them appropriately different.
Fast forward to 2008, and I was happy to have a Dobe on my easel again, and a truly beautiful one at that. The only sad note was that her trainer had passed away a couple of years before I received the commission. And this trainer, my late husband Dr. Tom Kazo, who was particularly fond of Lexi and her owners, was thus tragically no longer around to watch me bring her to life with pastels on paper.
Tom loved to watch me paint. That’s how we met, in 1977, when I visited his Hell On Paws training kennels in Miramar, Florida. Wrote about this in my memoir, Tom Kazo…
