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The Dog Against the Yellow Wall

Patricia Walkow

    I need a picture—now.
    Clicking the “Peru Photos” folder on my computer, I browse through the collection of photographs I had taken on a trip. All I have to do is select one for my pastel art project.
    I am taking a painting class and realize mastering this art form will take a lifetime. And my remaining lifetime isn’t all that long, so I need to line up a bunch of images, skip class, and just paint.
    Sculpting in wax or clay I can do, then have a bronze made from my design. 3-D works better for me.
    But drawing? Painting? They’re completely different creatures and often make me ask, “Why not just click an image on the camera unless I intend to paint something abstract?”
    Browsing through the pictures, I see there are many potential subjects: llamas, Machu Picchu vistas, stone walls, the floating Uros Islands of Lake Titicaca, and the madly colorful market at Pisac.
    A far less dramatic image calls to me—a large dog trotting down the street beside the bright golden-yellow walls of a hotel in the Sacred Valley of the Inca. The building sits on an ancient stone base and a brilliant electric-blue door breaks the expanse of chipped, cracked, canary-toned plaster. The pooch struts along the sidewalk, likely taking its daily promenade around the neighborhood. It seems the striking yellow wall reflects the simple joy of his carefree soul.
    Hmmm...this might work.
    The dog’s a poster child for a mutt and I am surprised he is easy to draw.
    Over the next few days, I sketch the animal and background, then apply pastel color. Focusing on its face and strut, the dog looks confident, happy-go-lucky. Clearly male, he’s tan, black, and brown with long white legs and large paws. His ears are floppy. Maybe that’s what makes him seem so lighthearted.
    But I discover it’s not so straightforward to render the image of the building’s exterior. What seems like a solid single color presents a dilemma when I attempt to replicate the look on paper.
    Yellow isn’t only yellow.
    There are color-intensity nuances, shading differences, and texture disparities...a challenge for an inexperienced painter. Trying to capture yellow seemed to me like trying to understand a person. There is so much there...so much you cannot see until you look closer. Much closer.
    In the following months, I attend to my handiwork from time to time but don’t do much with it. After a few attempts to finish it, I get frustrated and store it between the couch and the wall. Hidden from sight, I forget about it, along with three other paintings in various stages of fitful creation. It’s a good thing I don’t rely on my art for an income.

***

    Ten years pass: ten fewer years to master, or at least become mediocre at the art of painting. My old dog dies after a long, good life, and my husband and I spend a few months without a canine companion.
    The house is painfully empty. Cleaner, but lonely.
    We like larger dogs and decide to look for an older puppy from a shelter south of town. I peruse the organization’s website and keep coming back to one particular young dog.
    When we get there, the attendant escorts us inside, where we see the stray sitting on a yellow mat in his enclosure. His big, brown eyes follow our movement. He weighs forty-six pounds at only eight-months old, and his name emerges by the end of the day: Handsome Magic—Magic, for short.
    The night we take him home, something bothers me about him. I’m not sure what it is. I study him, but I draw a blank.
    What is it about him?
    Vague fragments of thoughts and fleeting images tickle around in my brain and I can’t piece them together to figure out what is vexing me.
    As it always plays out with any pet we adopt, within a few months we belong to Magic as much as he belongs to us.
    The unbreakable bond solidifies.
    But still....
    One sunny winter afternoon, when he passes the one-year-old mark and his colors settle into what they will ultimately be, I observe him snoozing on the sofa. I study his size and color and build. Note his long legs. It dawns on me.
    No! It’s just too weird.
    To confirm my suspicion, I reach behind the sofa and pull out my pastel rendition of the dog trotting along the fractured yellow wall of the hotel. I stare at the unfinished image and turn to my napping pup. Involuntarily, I break into a crooked smile. He could be the identical twin of the animal in my painting.
    I am speechless.
    When I was looking to adopt, did my subconscious pick out the pet I drew in my painting?
    Did chance demand this trotting mongrel would turn out to be an almost identical image of my future pet?
    Is it a stroke of fate that Magic is a happy, joyful pet as I imagined the dog against the yellow wall was?
    I don’t know.
    Or, is there something else going on? Maybe there’s a connectedness between past and present, the past foretelling the future.
    Life is packed with coincidental events. Some people analyze them, dissect them, try to understand them.
    Not me.
    This coincidence underscores the mystery of existence, and I am perfectly content to consider its presence in this world an inscrutable and delightful aspect of life.
    Why destroy the magic?

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