Boston Fox

6" x 6"
Oil on Linen Canvas

Sometimes I do commissions.

This painting came about as a planned birthday gift. I thought ahead and ordered the pre stretched linen canvas as the size was different than the stretchers I had in my studio. My first stretcher order didn't get finalized at Utrecht for some reason- and getting the supplies took an extra week. But I had allowed enough time, so that was OK.

Once I had finished painting him, he needed to dry, and that took more than a week (white can take a long time to dry). Then, once dry to the touch, I covered him with re-touch varnish, which took another day to completely dry. So finally, on February 21st, I packed him up carefully, took him to our local post office, and mailed him off priority mail. Like I've done many previous times with no issues.

This still gave perhaps 10 days before the birthday.

Well, fox decided he wanted a slow tour of the Northeast. He sat in the Scarborough Maine postal sorting facility for 3 days, and finally made his way to Boston.

By then, a couple of days over due, apparently he was enjoying himself so much that he didn't want to leave Boston to go to his forever home in the South.

I'm thinking fox maybe went down to Boston Public Garden after reading Make Way for Ducklings?

Finally I declared him missing and gave up that he would ever be found. I preferred he'd been stolen rather than crushed under some dumpster in a back alley.

Then, viola! He resurfaced in Boston, caught a plane to NC, arriving where he was going two weeks after he left Maine, and way past the birthday!