This is my boxer Nikki. It is the only portrait I’ve done in 2009. I lost her perfectly healthy 12 year old mother Adrienne to bloat in February of this year, and two months later 8 year old Nikki was diagnosed with lymphoma. Life can be so cruel sometimes!

So we spent the summer making each day with Nikki the absolute best day possible. Every day she went for a walk or some adventure. We spoiled her absolutely rotten. On August 18th she passed away. Shortly after I started working on this portrait of her. It took me a little while to finish, but I have to say each time I worked on it the memories took me to a place where we were together again. Sometimes in my peripheral vision her eyes would shift around to another very familiar expression of hers. It was also one of those portraits that just seemed to draw itself. All I had to do was put my pencil on the paper and scribble where the graphite was supposed to go! When I came close to finishing it I felt like I was having to say goodbye all over again… like I lost her twice. It was a very sad, yet very cathartic experience all in one.

She was born in my hands in 2001 and died in my arms in 2009. I miss her terribly.

Someone wrote to me that day and said that “with every joy that passes, a beauty remains”. My goal was to capture that beauty in this portrait.

8”x10”
Graphite on Bristol Vellum
Mechanical clutch pencils 2B & H