You and me and everydog we know

“A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.”
- E.B. White

And that’s how all seven beloved Lily Spindle dogs came into our lives . . . they just happened along.  They crossed our paths at that perfect moment when our hearts wrestled brief control from our rational minds (always questioning if we really need another dog – UM, OF COURSE!) and in they came. Every stinky, silly, frustratingly perfect one of them!

So when this little painting happened along we immediately fell in love with it, too!  We delighted in the way the artist’s adept brushwork captured the sturdy alertness of a terrier (of which we each have many), while the solitary vulnerability of the wee pooch grabbed our heartstrings and tugged hard! The artist’s undeniable sensitivity to dogs brings a quiet emotion to her painting that we don’t often see in canine portraits.  And although a contemporary work of art, the beautiful luminosity of the color palette and the abstract approach to landscape recalls some of our favorite mid-century Bay Area Figurative painters like Bischoff and Diebenkorn.

Fortunately, there need not be a struggle in your heart or mind about bringing this petite dog painting into your life and home. The framed 5” x 7” oil on canvas gem can be yours for $250 by emailing me at debra@lilyspindle.com.  Hurry before this pup painting goes up on our website!

And remember, ALWAYS ADOPT!

-- Debra

Funky Cold Fontana Medina. OR, meet me near the Fountain of Neptune.

When walking through Italy, it's easy to get lost in the resplendence of its centuries' old architecture and romantic, sinuous alleyways, occasionally leaping out of harm's way as taxis and scooters roar through the streets and honk at you with impassioned fury. We got lost a few times. A bit turned around. Somewhat befuddled, a twinge fuzzy as to where we'd been and where we were going. But it was a glorious kind of being astray. And there was never a place or moment where we couldn't find a delicious cafe or restaurant to pop into for food and drink unlike any other we've enjoyed.

*By the way, here are a few "on the house" (pun intended) "dining in Italy" tips:
#1 - Avoid any place with a host out front inviting you in.
#2 - Avoid any place with an enormous menu depicting the dishes in large, unappealing imagery.
#3 - Don't sit your butt down at an Italian cafe when you're sipping that cappuccino. A "standing cappuccino" has a set price, but sitting a table can double, sometimes triple the cost. Italians call cafes "bars" for a reason. It's guzzle and go, baby.

Smaller than a horseshoe!

Detail of a night scene.

The tiniest studio/workspace/shop in Naples?

The beaming artist herself, in her studio. That may or may not be her mother in the background.

Yup, she wrapped up our paintings in a pizzeria placemat. Does it get any more amazing that that?

One of the many sunny afternoons of our Italy meandering found us eating cacio e pepe and drinking Peroni at a restaurant around the corner from the Castel Nuovo (also known in Naples as Maschio Angioino). Next door to the restaurant was a tiny artist's studio, with hundreds of paintings stacked atop one another, some of them copies of famous Renaissance paintings, others copies of erotic Pompeiian paintings labeled "obscene" and relegated to the Gabinetto Segreto. But many, many others were her own. Tiny landscapes and seascapes, with a smoking Vesuvius in the background, and miniature people toiling away in the foreground. Something about her enormous, generous smile, her incredibly prolific creative output, her inability to speak any English, her enabling of our collective desire to dig through the layers of leaning paintings, all combined, made us incapable of leaving without snatching up a handful of her tiny oil works of art. They're currently being framed and will be up on the Lily Spindle site very soon for you to purchase. By the way, they retail for less than $60 each. How's that for a super steal? Email me at rebecca@lilyspindle.com if you'd like to lay claim before anyone else!

Love,
the Lily Spindle ladies