This painting is the first in our third group of collaborative paintings. It was painted in the San Francisco area of our Bodega Studio, shortly after Jake died of an endless epileptic seizure, in the summer of 1991. My (Ruth/left) side of the painting was inspired by how terribly I missed touching Jake. Steve and I had been working on The Bodega Paintings in the studio below. I put the paper up, for this painting, in the loft because I was crying my eyes out and blubbering over the loss of my Best Dog In The World and I didn't want to be seen or heard trying to paint in this blustery, vulnerable state. I hadn't been drawing prior to this painting in any but Steve's "pencil in each hand trace yourself method" but I needed a soft pencil to trace my hands while, with closed eyes to remember better, I felt Jake on the paper. I drew him to the memory of the weekly baths I had given him over the seven years he lived with me. The beginning of each bath found me dragging Jake's one-hundred and sixty-five pound body over the carpet of the living room floor where I usually captured him with my sweet talk, by his sturdy shoulders and front legs. He was morose, rolling his old eyes at me like the torture of this could not possibly been borne again. He would throw those wily back legs up against the bathroom door jam each and every time in protest. I'd unhook him, slide him onto the linoleum tiled floor and put each foot in its turn into the tub. Once in the bathroom Jake became lethargy. He pouted his way through the rinse down, wouldn't look me in the eye. I'd soap him up, keeping it out of his sweet brown eyes. Oh I would rub the soap into his soft black fur, rubbing down the muscles in his back and shoulders, sweet talking every inch of the way, reminding him, in the end, he always likes his bath. Somewhere around the rinse, all dreamy-eyed, Jake would lean-fall into me grateful for the lovely bath. We'd towel down and with the hair dryer, pet him into the freshest dog smelling beauty. Happy boy trotted down the little hall away from the bathroom ready for a walk or a nap in the sun. Jake, oh my boy, how missed.
His being so very gone, caused his rich black fur to go ghostly grey in the paint. His death trapped him in a close flat place, the yellow wall topped with the red line. The orange was a bit of hope that I would see him again, somewhere.
Steve's black dog on red, I believe, is Jake dying from Death Is Coming. It is his posture, his seizure. The sunburst in the left is the electricity gone wild. The field of red, the blood that drained from him. Oh death.
I can cry to remember it. Steve was home in Bodega with Jake when he started having the seizure that wouldn't stop until he was dead. I was twenty miles away at work. Steve and I had not been together more than a few months when this happened. A sad and huge responsibility. When I remember Jake I remember the sweetest dog friend in the world. I fear that when Steve remembers Jake, he remembers the big dog that died while he did not know what to do to help him. DIC, Death Is Coming, is what the vet said Jake died from. The relentless seizure caused his temperature to rise. The extended fever caused a weakening of his arteries and veins which caused him to bleed to death.
Two Headed Jake is iconic, the only manner in which a moment of such import rests in this world. Each side embodies our own experience of Jake, their opposition draws together a memory.
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