Who is Charlie?  Well, Charlie is Aaron and Vanessa’s chocolate lab.

That’s him on the left of the two dogs.  Oh, and that’s Aaron and Vanessa during an engagement photo shoot.  Charlie is a very sweet dog, but a bit goofy and clumsy.

He was pretty much King Pin for the first three or four years of his life, but about a year after Aaron and Vanessa got married, along came Ezekiel.  And then he was not.

Ezekiel was the center of attention and Charlie knew his reign was over. So in this picture he is pretty much resigned to the fact that it’s all about the boy now.  Can’t you see it in his expression?  But he does love the boy anyway.

So when I saw this picture I knew I wanted to do an art quilt of Charlie.  He has such a soulful expression of “Whoa is Me”.  Why not the baby too you ask?  Well, it wouldn’t have worked as well.  Also, I’m saving that baby for his own art quilt.  I can hardly wait to find just the perfect picture.

So here is Charlie, all by himself, with his sad, but soulful expression.  I made him for an auction at Visions Art Museum back last year.  The theme was something to do with chocolate, so instead of the usually connotation of yummy chocolate, I decided that a chocolate lab would be fun.  What’s so cool about this whole thing is that a well known and much beloved art quilt collector, Del Thomas, bought it and Charlie is now a part of her collection.  She wrote about it her blog and you can read about it if you go to her link and click on my name.