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This is the REAL Neva. She is part Bichon Frise and part Maltese, a pseudo-breed that snobs call a Maltichon (pronounced Malty Shawn). Malty Shawn, however, is just a ten dollar French sounding word for “mutt.” I attribute this to the time a light bulb lit over some poodle owner's head in association with adding “adoodle” to the end of the name of whatever puppies resulted from hanky-panky with another breed. Labradoodle, anyone? Goldendoodle? The adoodle advantage, you see, is that breeders can sell “puppies” rather than give away “mutts.” I believe we would be inundated with Horseadoodles, Giraffeadoodles, and Cowpoos if they could figure out how to make it happen.  

Over time, the owners of other breeds wanted in on this action.  Breeders of Bichon Frises and Malteses (both recognized Westminster Dog Show contestants) were more than happy to pretend that BFM puppies were worthy of a fancy mock French name. All of which is way too much information to go through when people ask me what kind of dog Neva is, so my standard answer is that she is, officially, a “Little White Fluffy Dog.”

I say the REAL Neva because when she comes home from the groomer every other month she does not look like this. Those few days she looks clean and cotton-puffy and it is possible to tell that her ears are actually apricot colored and her feet are not really slate gray from dirt. Then reality sets in and she again becomes, to her great pleasure, the dusty scragamuffin dog who you see depicted here. Whether cleaned and groomed or filthy and fuzzy, she is a stone cutie. Now, people with dogs that weigh more than six pounds might consider Neva to be some kind of “toy,” with associated implication of sub-canine status. However, I offer proof of her bona-fides by noting that she has the official canine two speeds (off and on), plays fetch religiously, and goes ape-adoodle beyond belief at the sound of a doorbell. Member of the total dog club, in other words.

I hesitated at first about trying to capture Neva in a painting. Several of my Wednesday Night Paint Group cohorts are such masters at pet portraits that the baseline for capturing animal personality is intimidatingly high. I worried that, in comparison, I might end up painting something that looked more like a Rastafarian collie or pipe-curled iguana. On the other hand, I am a firm believer in the “it's only paint” philosophy. As in – who cares if I failed to get a good likeness? It's only paint. 

In this case, it's only A LOT of paint. Most of this painting was done with a palate knife, utilizing same general artistic technique that non-health-minded people employ when slathering butter on dinner rolls. I worked very quickly and, frankly, had myself a paint-slathering ball. There were after the first session a couple of small details that weren't Neva, but the paint had to dry before I could put the fix in. Now that it's done, this is her, all the way.  Neva.  Or, possibly, Phyllis Diller.

Which brings me to the other point I'd like to share about this painting: how long it took to paint. Many artists dread this question because sometimes you get lucky and knock out a keeper in no time. (Trade secret: we’re all terrified that if we tell somebody that such-and-such a painting only took an hour or two, they'll ask how come it’s so expensive).

Answer: this took 2 hours and a lifetime to paint. Two hours slapping paint around like butter on a dinner roll. A lifetime learning how to do so. The most important lesson learned over those many years has already been mentioned, and it's one of the hardest to learn. Sometimes you just have to wait for the paint to dry before you can fix something. If you don't, you still might pull off a lovely painting, but only if mud is your intended subject matter.     

Neva would say Hi, but it's nap time.

BTW, to any doodle aficionados out there.  I was just kidding!  

Today, March 10, 2017, I started my new job in the Office of Environmental Health Services at the Virginia Department of Health.  But enough about that!  I actually had to leave early on this first day of the rest of my (working) life in order to travel a few blocks to the Richmond Office of Senator Tim Kaine.  I hope my new employers will be forgiving.  

The back story:  years ago, when Mr. Kaine was completing his term as Governor of Virginia, then Secretary of Health and Human Resources Marilyn Tavenner commissioned a painting from me commemorating his service because he was absolutely the "best boss" she'd ever had. What I painted was a watercolor of a scene at Douthat State Park, his favorite Virginia state park.  It hangs above the fireplace in his Richmond home to this day.  

When I painted "Memorials," it occurred to me that this would make a wonderful gift to the Senator in gratitude for his service to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the nation.  Moreover, the symbolism of two great political figures, Washington and Lincoln, would be, hopefully, inspiration to him as he continues to serve the people.  So I contacted Marilyn to see if she could help set this up.  She was more than happy to oblige.  It took about four months but she was tenacious and today it happened.

The senator was extremely gracious, and seemed thrilled with the gift.  He let us know exactly where he planned to hang it in his Washington office, and indicated he will send us a photo of it in his office along with an invitation for us to have lunch with him in the Senate Dining Room.  

A truly delightful man; he even offered to write a note excusing my cutting out early my first day on the job!

Change of pace here, folks.  This blog isn't about one of my paintings or about art in any way.  Hey, when you are the boss of your own website you can break bad.

Like many artists, I have a day job.  Or I at least I used to, then didn’t for a while, and now do again.  I was laid off in late 2016 and it took some four months to get back into the working world.  From what I understand, I’m better off than many, because it’s not unusual for job searches these days to extend beyond six months or even a year.  The reason is HR Departments.  Or, to put it kindly, the internet, which has transformed HR Departments into the biggest force of unmitigated evil since those impossible to open plastic clamshell packages that can slice off your finger.

Of the over 70 resumes I submitted during my recent “between jobs” existence, I received actual human communication in return on six of them.  That is appalling.  Let’s study it.

Done right, looking for a new job after being laid off is a full-time job in itself.  And it should be.  After all, if I am asking Brand X to take me on as their Senior Poobah, it is only right that I uphold my end of the bargain in my efforts to open the conversation.  I have worked diligently to learn what’s out there, to educate myself about the organizations that offer it, and to then tailor the presentation of my credentials to each offeror in the most professional and informative way.  They have set up the hoops, and I have willingly and dutifully jumped through them.  This has involved some continuing education on my part because the last time I really had to do this, the earth was young.

Back then you pored through employment ads in the Sunday newspaper to identify opportunities and snail mailed in your resume and cover letter to an actual person with a name.  These were printed on paper.  Fancy paper.  Competition for jobs was limited to a realistic number of applicants because not every single person in the United States knew about every single job opening.  Hiring managers got a few resumes, made a few phone calls, scheduled a few interviews, and BAM it was done.

Then came the internet.  Positions are now advertised on empires such as Indeed and Linked-in and everything is done digitally.  Sure, it’s great that you don’t have to get expensive paper to print your resume.  It’s WONDERFUL that you don’t have to buy a stamp for every job you pursue.  But the down side is that every single job advertisement leads to hundreds of submissions.  (Thousands?  Millions?)  I’ve learned that some corporate HR departments don’t actually read resumes; they’ve developed sophisticated computer algorithms that scan resumes and cover letters for key words and phrases.  This is about as sensible as selecting your King on the basis of who can extract a sword embedded in a rock.  Sure, it’s been done, but conceptually it’s asinine.

As a result, job searching these days, like purchasing a goldfish, is a process that begins with hope and ultimately ends up with your efforts being flushed down a toilet.  It’s depressing.  It’s inhumane.  It sucks.

By sheer repetition I became a Jedi master at working my way through onerous corporate “Apply for this Position” web-pages.  I got to the point that I could zoom through all the veteran status/race/gender/citizenship clicks at light speed.  Some of the more inventive ones had special questions geared to the job itself.  One might hope that these would be read by human beings, but I doubt it.  Some of my best stuff went into those answers only to generate zilch in return.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Some jerk actually took time away from his computer solitaire to email me that although I had “given the best answer by far,” they were looking for a candidate with some quality other than what I offered.  Hair color maybe. 

Or this, which I find especially mind-boggling:  the little block you have to fill in when you first submit your resume providing your requested salary.  If you write “negotiable,” you’ll get angry red font telling you that you must put in a number.  Some might allow you a range, but that’s rare.  I’m sorry, HR people of the world, but do you REALLY think it is smart to automatically eliminate the potential best candidates simply because they are foolish enough to enter a number that isn’t an accurate guess of the assumptions programed into your computer?  At least determine the candidates who are right for the job before you start thinning the herd.  Sometimes I think my dog could put together better HR policy than these nitwits.  Her name is Neva.

Back in the day, if they liked your stuff, they’d interview you.  Then you would either get the job or not.  These days, if your resume and cover letter pass the auto-screening, you have to suffer through the indignity of a telephone interview with some flunky seven states away reading scripted questions that have no more relevance to the job at hand than a brick does to aerosol propellant.  This flunky marks nonsense on a chart, puts the chart on a shelf, checks Facebook for an hour or so, then makes another call to interview a person in Oklahoma about different work the flunky also doesn’t know the first thing about.  Assuming a janitor doesn’t toss the chart (this is about a 50-50 proposition), some other flunky will do something with it a few weeks later.  Repeat a few times and you MIGHT get the opportunity to communicate with a person familiar with the job in question and actually qualified to assess whether you would be a good fit. 

People in the job search mode also may be forgiven for concluding that some advertised jobs simply do not exist.  You do this long enough and you see certain advertisements automatically reappearing every 30 days.  I’m not talking about generic jobs where a resume pool would be a handy thing.  These are specialty positions that generally get filled and then it’s done.  The only two explanations that come to mind are (a) mind-blowing incompetence or (b) actual malice on the part of the HR goofball keeping the vacancy announcement alive. 

One company notified me that I was a candidate for a job and asked me to complete a detailed 8-page questionnaire which would be judged both on content and quality of writing.  I spent hours writing, proofing and double-checking.  Never heard back from them.  Contacted them twice by email and once by phone just to make sure they had received it.  Not a peep.  So I sent a very polite email to the company’s North American Chief Executive Officer telling him what happened.  A few days later a bewildered HR doofus who’d hopefully just received a swift kick in the butt called to ask me if I was a relative of somebody who worked there.  I shared my story and was told that, oh yes, months ago they determined that they had really been looking for somebody with, well, a different hair color.  Still polite, I told her I could fully understand and respect their decision but, given that I had invested several hours at their request, perhaps they might have considered actually providing that information to me.  Especially since I’d followed-up.  Repeatedly.  She just didn’t get it.  I would have had a more productive conversation discussing advanced calculus with a rabbit.  Apparently, some HR people just don’t do communication or civility.   

Search for a job long enough and this happens:  Months, even more than a year, after an application enters an HR black hole, comes an out of the blue robot-email nasty-gram confirming that although you just weren’t up to Brand X’s particular brand of snuff, they really truly sincerely honestly and by gosh genuinely wish you well.  Presumably in your dealings with unemployment insurance paperwork. 

The system tries to justify non-communication in two ways.  First, when you complete the original electronic submission you are emailed an auto-reply saying “we’ll review your pitiful crap, and IF there’s anything remotely worthwhile in it we might get back to you, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”  The really lazy companies will also invite you to “track” your application online, thereby absolving themselves of having to even pretend they’re human by getting you to do their job for them.  Here’s my response to that particular indignity:  Hey, Pinhead, I KNOW that I completed your HR nightmare webpage completely and correctly when I applied because it didn't tell me it was unfinished using angry red font.  I have not heard a peep from you since.  If you really think I’m going to waste time double-checking your HR nightmare webpage just to verify what I already know then let me put you in touch with Neva for ideas on how to improve your operation.

Look.  I KNOW that I’m being one-sided.  If I worked in a human resources department, I’ve no doubt that I would be able write just as scathingly about the banana-brains who apply for jobs.  From personal experience, I can tell you that when you advertise for a specific skill set you get responses from people who don’t have anything approaching it.  When medical groups advertise an opening for a brain surgeon, I’m sure they get tons of resumes from people with literature degrees whose prior experience has been working at Applebee’s.  I imagine it’s like trying to find which one of those mythical infinite monkeys actually typed the works of Shakespeare.

But you know what?  This is way it’s always been, and it does not justify the modern-day cesspool that job searching has become.  HR people, how hard is it, really, to communicate with some sort of professional kindness and schedule commitment?  It is your job after all.  (In fairness, I did talk to some HR folks who were top-notch professionals.  Talking ‘bout you, E.W. and P.T.). 

By now you might be asking why I have composed an open letter to all HR personnel worldwide only to publish it on an artist’s blog that gets read by maybe a few dozen folks working in other fields.  It’s simple really.  To get it off my chest.  AND because it makes about the same amount of sense as anything else about this whole process.  Call it a Primal Scream. 

To people still job searching or who may find themselves in this boat in the future there is good news:  it does end.  Eventually you become the infinite Shakespeare writing monkey who is picked for the job.  Every single person who has been through this before has told me unequivocally that they ended up better off than they were.  In fact, most said that being laid off was the best thing that ever happened to them.  I’ll get back to you on that, but at this point I’ll say that my new job is looking to be a great fit, so I could easily be saying it too.

I start my new job on March 10.  Yay!

p.s., while you’re here, check out the art.  Just saying.