Snickers' 10th Birthday was painted from a photograph sent by the artist's friend on the day her dog turned ten. The painting's central move is a color one: Snickers is a gray-and-white terrier mix, but at the moment the photo was taken his entire forward-facing body was lit from below by four birthday candles, and the painter chose to honor that light rather than the dog's actual coat. What reads as warm caramel, cream, and orange is not fur — it's firelight, painted as the dominant reality of the scene. The strongest passage runs down through the beard, where the flames throw a column of pure warm white and yellow that turns the lower face into something closer to illumination than to hair. The dog's eyes are rendered carefully, dark and shining, and his muzzle ends in a small dark nose with a touch of green. He's wearing a blue pinstripe coat with white trim, both of which pick up orange in the candle glow. The cake is a small round cake in a deep curved-edge dish, with "Snickers" piped across the front in curly orange frosting. The background is a warm putty wall and a cool blue tablecloth, with a yellow ribbon curling across the lower right. The painting returns to the artist's portrait mode after a run of cityscapes, and takes a commission occasion — a friend's dog's birthday — as a real opportunity to paint the transforming power of artificial light on a familiar subject.