The Penguin

My dog, Oscar, died on Monday. Actually he was my mother-in-law's dog; since she has restricted mobility, I was the one taking him for walkies. I didn't mind too much. It gave me an excuse to get outside and walk around. And it was about the only time Mom got some time alone - Oscar was attached to her at the hip. Oscar was a stubborn little thing, and a big soul. Once he formed an opinion of you, he stuck with it. Mom was his sun, moon, and stars. His favorite place in the world was stuffed between her hip and the arm of her easy chair, like a limpet, and neither God nor money could ever get him down. He filled the house, whether he was barking at the doorbell, or staring at your burger with insatiable buggy eyes, trying to teleport your food into his gullet. He liked to sit at the entrance to the kitchen as Mom whipped up his slops, front feet planted obstinately over the line, and if he thought nobody was watching he would pad in silently right behind her ankles, a

Poster for 1980 horror film, Delusion.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53838146 Apologies for the lurid visuals, I just thought it was a funny illustration, and the tagline is strangely appropriate for my post when taken out of context. This poster is for a thriller in the (SPOILER ALERT) "The main character was the killer all along but thought they weren't!!" school of B-movie horror. Unfortunately this post is less about homocidal insanity, and more about abstruse COVID-seclusion navel-gazing. To wit: how do I, as an artist, know that what I think about my art is what other people actually see? Am I deluded in my evaluation of my own talent? And, last but not least: Am I deluded in my goals as an artist? 1. Did I actually make what I thought I made? I've always lived in my head, so my connection to reality - objective reality - has always been tenuous at best. I can't count how many times I've created an image, thinking I&