Still life with dogs

The blackberries are ripening early this year and this shot was taken on the way back from the woods today. Excuse the hound who is partly in the photograph. The contrast of one ripe and other berries in various stages of maturity is useful if you're an artist creating a still life. There's a poignancy in still life paintings - a silence accompanied by a story evoked but not fully expressed, one that you can only follow with your eyes and not your ears. Hence if all the berries were of the same colour.... you see? In the history of art, small dogs (in paintings) usually represent fertility. My large hound wasn't bred in the days of medieval art filled with symbols- Labradors only appeared on the scene in the 20th century. I should have eaten that ripe berry....

Photo copyright SvD.