Book: Rosebud the Rescue Dog… or Who Rescued Who?

If you like the paintings of Rosebud you will love the book “Rosebud the Rescue Dog… or Who Rescued Who?” The book is 8” x 6”, softcover, 20 pages full of paintings and the story of Rosebud. Fun for all ages. Send $20.00 plus $4.00 postage to Vickisa, 71C Olema-Bolinas Road, Bolinas, CA 94924, or email for info on where you can buy the book. vickisa@vickisa.com

Vickisa and Rosebud from the Point Reyes Light By Leslie Goldberg

Chilling out at one of the picnic tables in front of Toby’s, I happened to meet West Marin artist Vickisa Feinberg and her four-legged pal, Rosebud.

“Give the nice lady an LA handshake, Rosebud,” Vickisa said.

The short, stocky, mostly black and white canine immediately offered me a paw then reached up and licked my face.

“How did you teach her that?” I had to ask.

Vickisa, who has a laugh like Phyllis Diller told me she didn’t teach Rosebud the “LA handshake” at all: “I just took her to LA. She saw what everybody else was doing and she had to do it too.”

Vickisa has painted some 15 portraits of Rosebud, an Australian Cattle Dog, and has reproduced them in a small book which is available at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station. The book, titled Everybody Loves Rosebud is an ode to a dog – starting with the day Rosebud arrived at Vickisa’s house, brought by a dog rescuer from the Smiley Dog Rescue, a volunteer organization based in Lafayette.

Clearly Rosebud, like her soon-to-be owner, Vickisa had a sense of style, showing up, as she did, in a turquoise Thunderbird.

“The dog rescuer looked just like Buffalo Bill and we had to walk the entire length of fence on my 10-acre place,” Vickisa said.

In her book, she wrote, “After fence patching, gate fixing, latch repair, losing my glasses and fencing myself out, I passed the adoption requirements and she was mine!”

The first time I “met” Rosebud was at the Station House a while back. Two large portraits of the dog were hanging in the bar. The paintings reminded of folk art: down-to-earth, endearing but not sentimental, certainly not Hallmark. Her book of all the Rosebud paintings is a celebration of one of life’s ordinary yet extraordinary events: having a dog.

When I saw the paintings of dog, whose markings include a big heart on her side, I was smitten. I thought the heart was artistic license. I never imagined that a dog would have a real marking like that, until I encountered Rosebud in the flesh and learned she does, in fact, have a big heart-shaped spot on her side.

Last week Vickisa and I got together again at Gallery Route One, where she’s a member artist. That day she and Rosebud were putting in their hours running the gallery. Business was slow and we had a chance to chat about her dog, her art and her life.

“It’s really strange,” said Vickisa, as we sat on the big white blocks in the gallery. “She’s a lot like me. She talks a lot – like me: blah, blah, blah. She’s me in a dog coat.’’

Rosebud, still a puppy, came into Vickisa’s life after she went through a five-year rough patch. “My life was like a country western song,” she said. “You know — I lost my house; I lost my dog; I lost my cat; I lost my….”

The subtitle to her book is Rosebud, the Rescue….or Who Rescued Who? “Rosebud is the best friend anyone could have,” Vickisa said.

And then she laughed, “Better than any man!”

Before I got a dog myself, I could never understand dog owners saying things like, “I’m Sparky’s mom.” Now I do and it made perfect sense to me why Vickisa would buy six different dog foods and let Rosebud pick her favorite. I also understood why Vickisa, frustrated in her early efforts to train the dog, would try speaking to her in Spanish.

“She’d been raised around a lot of Spanish-speakers, so I thought I’d try that,” the artist said.

And Rosebud did learn a few words, such as “ven” and “toma.”

Vickisa explained that now the dog primarily understands English, including phrases such as “No scratchy,” “I have to worky worky,” “Go out and play,” “Look at the birds,” “You’re invited,” “You’re not invited,” and “Let’s go to your favorite restaurant,” which happens to be Toby’s coffee bar.

Vickisa has lived in West Marin for some 40 years. She’s a volunteer radio programmer for KWMR, an emergency medical technician and a firefighter for the Bolinas Fire Department. And she also runs the Dance Palace Camp and teaches art to school kids.

When she teachers art to school children and teenagers, she arrives dressed as Frida Kahlo. “I get them to do self-portraits,” she said. “I encourage them to write about their lives and the things they care about. It’s really important. They get to appreciate themselves more.”

Appreciating ourselves and our lives is what Vickisa’s art is about. It’s about seeing the beauty in the everyday world. It’s about seeing the divine in the everyday world.

One of the paintings shows Rosebud stretching. But Vickisa insisted she’s bowing. The inscription on the painting reads: “A dog’s love = God’s love. That’s why dog is God backwards.”