Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Little Fawn, Just Before, 1988

torbie kitten on rug
Fawn on the rug, just before I took the photo for the painting.

I lost my “yittle Fawn” 20 years ago this past week, and I’m remembering her with this special moment in time, the little impromptu photo shoot of a cute kitten playing with my rug that led to my first finished pastel painting, ever, when she playfully ran under the bed and looked out at me. Thank you, Fawn.

~~~

The little torbie kitten is my “yiddle” Fawn, chasing one of her rolled up balls of paper around my bedroom floor. That’s not so remarkable, that was Fawn’s favorite game, and kittens do that sort of thing all the time, but she’s still as cute as cute can be.

And that was why I took the photo in the first place, enjoying the wash of light over her head and paws, speckles on the rug and the circular pattern it made, thinking of a painting. But just moments later, when she looked up from her little game and saw her human and raced under the bed for her favorite game and…

photo of cat under bed
The reference photo for “Waiting for Mom”

…which, the next year, became…

pastel portrait of cat under bed
“Waiting for Mom”, pastel, 16″ x 23″, 1989 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

…my “first” pastel cat portrait, in 1989. I remember looking at the photo and wondering why I’d taken a photo of my bed post. Then I saw the little face and knew, somehow, I’d have to paint this. I had no skills for something like this, but that didn’t stop me from planning and giving it a try because I wanted to share that moment with everyone.

And that included not only Fawn, but also the wrinkled rug, the bedspread and dust ruffle and nicked bed post. I loved the detailed photorealistic paintings I’d seen of cats, but I also wanted to share the incredible variety of colors I saw in the white dust ruffle, and shapes I saw in the bedspread. This was my cat and my room, and I’m sure many people could relate to that. And over the years they have. It’s interesting to see the divide among those who live with cats and those who don’t: people who don’t live with cats don’t see the cat, only the fixtures, while people with cats see only the cat, no wrinkles, no nicks.

This image hit me at the perfect moment in my creative life, and my success in painting what I visualized moved my career as nothing else could have. I really did it. I really did the painting. I would never have spent that much time painting something without a cat in it. But I spent easily six months on this painting, because of Fawn.

I still sleep in that bed. The cedar chest in the background is at the foot of my bed today. My mother made the rug right after WWII and when the rug’s threads began letting loose a few years ago I couldn’t keep up with it unraveling, so I packed it away until I have time to rethread all the rounds. I gave the yellow gingham bedspread to a friend when she moved years ago, but every once in a while I still use the white dust ruffle, expressly so that kitties can hide behind it to leap out and attack my ankles. I just have a long bedspread on the bed right now, but Smokie and Bella have been having a ball doing just that. But still, all the items in the painting bring back memories.

The poster bed was in my bedroom in the house I rented before I moved here. Fawn continued leaping under the dust ruffle even after we moved here, all her life, and every so often I look into my bedroom at that corner of the bed and I can just picture her there.

Rather than starting to paste article content here and making this post entirely too long, I have links to the articles I’d like you to read.

Read about the painting “Waiting for Mom”, how I painted it, and what it meant for my career in “The Portrait That Started It All”.

Read about how Fawn came to me in  “My First Litter”.

Read about Fawn’s illness, and the miracle happening after I’d lost her in “The Balloon”.

 


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pastel portrait of cat under bed
“Waiting for Mom”, pastel, 16″ x 23″, 1988 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I painted this in 1989, just about three years after I began seriously working my way through learning to draw simply by drawing all the time, after work at night and on the weekend—and of course, I was painting my cats. It is painted in pastel, but when I began I hadn’t even purchased real pastels yet, I was still working largely in colored chalk. Read more and purchase.



Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.


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Sunday: Essays, Pet Loss, Poetry, The Artist’s Life

Monday: Adoptable Cats, TNR & Shelters

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Wednesday: Commissioned Portrait or Featured Artwork

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Saturday: Your Backyard Wildlife Habitat, Living Green With Pets, Creating With Cats

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Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

2 thoughts on “Little Fawn, Just Before, 1988

  • Their bodies may not be with us, but they live in our hearts.
    Purrs to you, as you remember Fawn.

    Reply
    • She is forever alive in her portrait, always a kitten, ready for play.

      Reply

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