Blog

Hello Animal Fans! 

HAPPY JUNE! Welcome to the second Paper.Ink.Paws. blog.  I hope you are all having a great time with your critter-pals. It’s been wonderful hiking deeper into mountains for our hikes with Oliver. Though we always love our Bonneville Shoreline Trail romps with our favorite pals too. It is very green up on the BST now, such a fleeting time for our foothills.  Quite Glorious. Soon it will evolve into a lovely analogous dry and warm color palette. The kind that is hard to see a rattlesnake in. Uh oh, time for that snake aversion training. Now that things are opening up post-COVID (carefully of course) I am hoping to start visiting shelters soon.   I can’t wait to start my endeavor of creative response to critters!  You’ll be the first to hear about it.

In the meantime, I’ll share with you my earliest known drawing that my parents saved from my young exploratory artistic days.  On a recent visit back home, my mom gave me a piece of paper with pencil lines scribbled all over it.  I have no recollection of this image.  However, located in the upper left corner in my dad’s handwriting it clearly states, Sandy, 4 years.  Mom said in a quiet tone as she handed it to me, “I’m so sorry honey, I felt so bad when I saw this.  You must have been sad when you made this drawing back then.”  (Or you might be thinking right now that maybe little Sandy was perhaps a tad angry considering the obvious velocity of the drawn lines) I exclaimed, “Why would you be sorry?  I LOVE this, it’s fantastic!”  she asked “WHY?”  I practically screamed with joy. “BECAUSE IT’S A DOG!!!”  She replied with a “huh” of disbelief type of sound.   I showed her the dog’s ears, how his head is turned to the side, but you can see his two dark little eyes and nose. His feet are moving, swishing his rather long fur coat! I am not certain my mom ever actually “saw” the dog but, HOLY COW, I love this drawing.  It inspires me to attempt a series of drawings and prints based on this early artifact.   It has several of my favorite artistic strategies; mark making, minimal palette and dog. Sometimes that is all it takes, a few of my favorite things (and yes, I am humming an old tune now) … Time to trot off to my studio and MAKE MORE MARKS.  

HAPPY TRAILS with HAPPY TAILS!

Sandy & Oliver

Welcome to my first Paper.Ink.Paws. blog!

By now you’ve probably seen a bit of the Facebook page and website.  Thank you so much for diving in deeper, into blog territory.  This first Blog will also be shown on the Facebook page.  As things settle in, I will have the blog only on our website and show more local rescue animals available on the Facebook page.  I will also share the animal visits and artwork I create on Facebook, but the most detailed information for the art available and adoptable animals I meet will remain on the website. 

Like many of the people reading this blog, I grew up loving all critters. Hearing the birds in our backyard lifts my heart. I love feeding my backyard birds AND squirrels, though I’m not so sure my neighbors appreciate the latter. Of course, I go out of my way to pet any dog I can get to.  It can get a bit out of control, as in I almost stole a neighbors Basset Hound once, because I had NEVER seen him at their house before.  I was sure he was a stray.  But that’s a story for another time (spoiler alert, he was NOT a stray!). Erik (tech support for Paper.Ink.Paws.) has often declared I have a puppy radar, and I believe that’s true. I can see a sweet little shape of a dog a block or two ahead of us, and can tell by its silly rompy gate, or the way its tail is so much larger than one expects, that it’s a Labrador puppy! There have been quite a few times when I squeal from the car as we pass a puppy. Erik, (Also known to Oliver as the Walking All-You-Can-Eat Treat Buffet!!!) asks, “Should I just stop the car and let you out and you can walk home from here?”   I quite often answer in the affirmative with the sound of a car door slamming as I race towards the puppy. I just can’t help myself, part of it is the puppy breath thing. Some people don’t like puppy breath.  I LOVE it, even if it smells a bit like epoxy to me. The other part is just getting to be near the pure joy inside the puppy, while deftly pulling my hand away from the razors called puppy teeth. PUPPIES, one of mother nature’s finest gifts!

Thank you for your interest in our new adventure.  I hope to start sharing a new adoptable animal blog in MAY.  Until then, happy trails with happy tails.

Sandy & Oliver