The Dog Who Could Draw by Stephen J Kimber

The dog never speaks without a pencil in his paw. On good days he may draw for you a line, a rectangle, a box, a room that becomes; what do you want? Might it be a bodega in some Latin American country, a taverna, a shack where drinks and mescal are served, a room where women also give away their forgetfulness potions. He is never quite precise as to which, and the voice that accompanies the blossoming picture is merely shading pencil.

The country is tropical, for the room owns a sultry air. In its languid atmosphere, tropic insects the size of birds drone. Latticed fans slowly rotate.

The room grows gilt-edged mirrors, bespattered with sweat and grime; with errant spittle and other steamy exudations of humanity. And a dog. He is suddenly, miraculously there, reflected in a mirror. What is he? A goodly dash of Airedale, perhaps. Shepherd? Something else, at once both slightly comic and somehow hallowed, whiskers slightly askew because his head is bent to one side. The pencil he adroitly, unnaturally manipulates in one paw is working fast because there, there, over there, then, in the early days, a little smaller in the mirror, a little grimier, is his master (the dog still obeying the laws of dogdom). His master has a pitcher of beer on the table beside him and is counting coins. No matter what the currency, no matter what the country, the fee is small, and his master insists he work swiftly, unless he wants a boot up his arse. He has a thirst to maintain and the dog knows the boot, so he is quick. But deft. So deft.

“I always sold,” he says, “right from the beginning.”

They go in, the dog and his master; a tavern, an inn, a cantina, and the master buys a drink. He drains it in great long gulps and orders another. Then he turns from the bar and tells anyone there that he has a dog who can draw. People laugh. “A dog who can draw better than anyone, ever.” Again the laughter, a little uneasy this time, and there are always some in a corner of the room who circle their temples with a finger in the universal sign for lunacy. “Look,” says his master, and the dog, carefully rehearsed, takes up a pencil and paper. In a minute he executes a sketch of the barkeep, usually humorous, sometimes verging on caricature (for the dog always reads his clientele well). The laughter has diminished, dies, changes. Sounds now of admiration and incredulity. “Draw me,” says a drunk at the back. It’s done in a minute or two. More laughter. Delight. Orders flood in.

The dog draws with great economy and style, but these are not sketches. There is tone, depth; the time is somehow fixed, the place, the argument you had last night with wife, boyfriend, husband, wife writ with crafty pencil. The pencil shades, but the pencil is pointed. His characterisation is astute.

The most famous of these early works  – A Suicide – was not commissioned. Drawn in a quiet moment, when every man, woman and child in the room had paid their fee and taken their portrait, it shows a man of that group, greatly depressed, his face caught in an unguarded moment. It is a face waxed with death and Arum Lilies are gathered about his feet on a barn floor. He hangs from the beam in some impoverished stable, a noose about his neck.

The story goes that the man depicted cut his wrists that very night.

The early work is unsigned. Later he signs, “the dog”. But he finds this unsatisfactory: the signature mutates, becomes “THE DOG”, then, simply (in inverse relation to work which is becoming increasingly ornate) “T.D.”, thence “t.d.” and finally “C.f.” (for Canis familiaris), a reflection of the dog’s belief that his is the artistic voice for all his kind.

The dog sets no great public store by his early, unsigned work, despite the critics who claim that if this is not his best work, then it is among his best. The dog loathes the critics, who patrol the edges of greatness and trumpet that they plucked it from obscurity.

***

He had a master then. Masters are to be denied. His master spoke rarely but kicked frequently. There were good days, when the sun shone warm and the beer was cold and his master had not had too much. Then he might pour a little into his hat and place this dirty article on the floor for the dog to drink.

One fine day, if the dog is to be believed, his master sets his beer filled hat down for the dog and pats him. “You’re a good dog,” he says, “a mongrel, but a good dog.”

“I’m your dog no more,” the dog suddenly enunciates.

His master gapes with astonishment.

“If I can draw like Brueghel, why not tell the world so, myself,” the dog adds.

***

He leaves his master and changes his style. Gone is the simplicity of line, the nuances of shading. The dog experiments, with charcoal, with India Ink. There are periods where watercolours are his chosen medium, then he gives them up as pallid, insubstantial. He wants depth, substance, the flavours of meat in his paints, light and heat in his suns. He tries oils, great goops of undiluted colour smeared with matted paws.

Dissatisfaction. The public clamours for his line drawings, the early stuff that he could turn out with ease. Where is their taste, their vision?

Who made the dog, he sometimes wonders? He has taken to absinthe, illegal but obtainable, and yearns for the taste that beer once had. Out of angst, he sends away the clamouring pack of sycophants that has attached itself to him, and bays from his penthouse balcony at a moon which in his final works is always as fat and full of promise as Brie.

And on the night he drinks himself to death, his final howl is pure atavism, the ultimate nostalgia.

Stephen Kimber

Image: A pyramid of coloured pencils with the points facing to the camera from Pixabay.com