On a beloved dog, the mysteries we are too quick to dismiss, and what becomes possible when we resist explaining everything away.
Attention Beyond the Studio
Dear Friends,
In my work, everything begins with looking.
Not quickly.
Not for recognition.
But for what is actually there.
Light shifts.
Edges soften or sharpen.
Color moves in ways that are easy to miss
if I decide too soon what I am seeing.
Over time, I’ve come to understand
that this kind of looking is really a form of attention.
It asks something of us.
A kind of patience.
A willingness to stay with what doesn’t immediately resolve—
even when it doesn’t make sense at first.
And over time, I’ve come to see that this kind of attention
doesn’t only shape what I paint—
it shapes what I notice in the world beyond it.
A few years ago, after my dog Zack passed,
I found myself continuing to look for him.
Not in a way I would have explained to anyone—
but in the clouds, mostly.
They would form and shift,
and every now and then, there would be something
that felt unmistakable to me.
A shape.
A presence.
Often, the suggestion of a Z.
I understand how that sounds.
But I also know what it felt like.
Some time later, I was cycling along the water in Florida,
on a path I knew well.
I had been trying, for months, to find another dog.
A Tibetan Terrier—
a breed I had loved years before,
and one that is not easy to come by.
Nothing had worked.
And at a certain point,
the search became something closer to asking.
So, I spoke to Zack.
Out loud.
I said,
“I need to talk to you.
Please show yourself to me.”
The sky was completely clear.
Not a single cloud.
I asked again.
And then, as I kept riding,
I looked out toward the horizon—
and there, just beginning to form,
was a single cloud.
It held for a moment.
Long enough.
And it took the shape of a Z.
I didn’t question it.
But I did something else.
I tested it.
“I’m going to ask for something more,” I said.
“If you’re really here—
have a white bird land next to me.”
Now, in Florida, white birds are not unusual.
But at that exact moment,
a white bird crossed in front of me
and landed beside the path
as I rode past.
I asked one more time.
“Show me a manatee.”
In all the time I had been there,
I had seen one.
Maybe two.
A little further along,
I passed a couple standing at the water’s edge.
They were pointing.
And as I rode by, I heard them say,
“Look—there’s a manatee.”
By then, I wasn’t trying to explain it.
I had asked.
Something had answered.
So I made my real request.
“I need another dog,” I said.
“I want it to be a Tibetan Terrier.
I’ve been looking for months.
Will you help me?”
And then—
nothing.
For two weeks,
I didn’t see him at all.
No shapes in the clouds.
No suggestion of a Z.
Nothing that felt like a response.
It would have been easy, at that point,
to let the whole thing settle back into explanation.
To assume I had imagined it,
or wanted it too much.
And I almost did.
Then I received a call.
It was from a woman I had reached out to months earlier—
someone deeply involved with Tibetan Terriers.
She told me there was a breeder in New York
whose dog was about to give birth.
Seven puppies had been expected.
All seven had already been spoken for.
But there was one more.
An eighth.
The puppies hadn’t been born yet.
Nothing was certain.
But if that puppy was viable, she asked,
would I be interested?
Yes, I said.
Of course.
When they were born,
the smallest one—the runt—survived.
And I was invited to come.
This was during COVID.
I put on a mask,
got on a plane,
and flew to New York
to meet a dog I hadn’t seen.
There were dogs everywhere in the house.
And eight puppies.
But one of them came directly toward me.
And stayed.
While I spoke with the breeder,
while I moved from room to room,
while I tried to take everything in—
that one puppy remained beside me.
At a certain point,
we sat down together.
And the breeder said, simply,
“Well… this one has chosen you.”
It was the runt.
The one that hadn’t been expected.
The one that had made space for itself
where there wasn’t supposed to be room.
I didn’t try to explain it.
But I recognized it.
I brought him home.
And I named him KAZ.
I could leave it there.
As a story about a dog.
Or coincidence.
Or something I don’t quite have language for.
But what stays with me
is not the explanation.
It’s the experience of asking—
of paying attention—
and of not immediately dismissing what followed.
We are taught, in small and constant ways,
to move quickly past what doesn’t fit.
To correct ourselves.
To rationalize.
To let things go before they have a chance
to mean anything at all.
And in doing so,
we often close something
before we’ve even had the chance to really see it.
Attention allows us to notice—
and remain available to—
what might otherwise be missed or dismissed.
I don’t know what to call what happened.
I only know that I asked,
I paid attention,
and something answered.
Not in a way I could prove.
But in a way I haven’t been able to ignore.
At the edge of light,
Melanie
The skull in this painting was discovered by Zack on one of our walks together in the woods.