8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. Last night I amused myself by going through my archives and adding the tag “grown folks” to all portrait posts about toys belonging to grown-ups. Boy, I nearly ended up with carpel-tunnel! About a quarter of the portraits I’ve painted were commissioned as gifts for adults by people who dearly love the child within them. These toys are absolutely, irrefutably “portrait worthy!” This bear, Pookie, has belonged to Wanda’s niece Sara since she was a baby, and she is now 26. Pookie was named after the comic-strip character Garfield’s own bear. Wanda tells me that he was once much whiter and plumper, and his nose has been squashed and nearly worn away. Sara happened to bring Pookie along on a recent visit so that Wanda could covertly photograph him for me, and the portrait will be a Christmas gift for Sara from Wanda.