Fluxie Sings the Blues

How did you come to make the painting Fluxie Sings the Blues?

Fluxie is a rescue dog, a mutt. Two years ago I went to the Animal Control Center on E.110^th Street. We made eye contact and she came home with me. Fluxie’s full name is Fluxie R. Mutt. Her purposefully anarchic nature led me inexorably to this name for her. One afternoon, about six months after her arrival, I was working on an acrylic study of Jeff Koons Creating ‘Michael Jackson Suckling Romulus and Remus at the Founding of Rome’ -- this is an image that comprises one of the gates of a large mandala I was working on at the time. The painting was about ninety percent done. There was some detail work on Jeff Koons left to finish, plus the lotus motif around the borders, that’s all. The study was primarily in ochre. I had Bronzino and Goltzius in mind while I was creating it. I had just prepared some International Klein Blue to do the lotus pattern in but I hadn’t applied any of it yet. Well anyway, that afternoon I took a phone call from my dealer into the library and I must have inadvertently closed the door on Fluxie, trapping her inside the studio. Being who she is, she knocked over the easel and my palette. The canvas landed face up on the floor. Fluxie landed in the International Klein Blue and proceeded to apply it liberally to the entire canvas using her paws as brushes. When I came back into the studio my immediate reaction was anger that almost instantaneously turned into huge, cathartic peals of laughter. As I was picking up the canvas the phrase “Fluxie sings the blues” popped into my head, and I knew that with no further work to be done we had just collaborated on a NextGen readymade.

Here is Portrait of Fluxie R. Mutt (with a nod to Picasso's 'Dog'):