April 14, A Plum for Art4Shelter!

We had a lovely day yesterday!  For me it started with my Paint Love Class at the Ivy in my studio, and  yes, we painted fruit, and then mugs, to get those brushes and painting muscles warmed back up again...

The fruit we painted on 5x7 paper for Art4Shelter, the Annual Fundraiser for Simpson Housing Services that I usually am way more up on and have painted more work for by now, but this year with packing and moving and unpacking and still setting up the house (I think it will be June before we are closer to "Settled"!) I have had to let a number of things slide.  Art4Shelter is one of those events that you SHOULD for SURE go to!  Especially if you love art and supporting people experiencing homelessness!

April 12, Asher, from 2022

 Here's another commission, from 2022~ I've been a bit too busy to paint the last few days, but I have a Paint Love class starting tomorrow so I'll be painting then for sure!  If you're interested, I do have a few spaces left and you can just come along and I'll set you up with materials for the day! here's the link with more info- $275 for 5 weeks of FUN with ME!

And of course I'm always happy to take on commissions as well!  Send me your critters!  I NEED to paint! 

8x8 acrylic on wood

sold

Salacious B Crumb!

  Yes, this is NOT a cat.

He is a Kaworkian Monkey-Lizard who acts as Jabba the Hut's court jester in several of the Star Wars movies that I am more familiar with because they came out when I was a kid...

Salacious B Crumb was selected by my 15 year old son as the pet he'd like painted for this month. He thought it was pretty funny to include him, and he was so delighted that he's been helping me wire all this month's 30 paintings with not much complaint!

Here is a link to the Wookipedia Site for our little friend!

April 11, A past Comm!

 This is Kylie, from a year ago- it is weird how our brains kinda shut out bad experiences (or maybe it's just me!) because I have to work to remember things well from last year, after the fire, which is making getting this year's taxes done rather difficult.

I also wanted to make sure an announce here that the 30 Cats in 30 Days Opening Party has been rescheduled to SUNDAY APRIL 21st from 2-4 at Diamonds! In several places I said it is this Sunday, the 14th, but that can't happen, so we are sliding it over to the 21st!

I'll be there with snacks and beverages and postcards and books and of course all the cats! The paintings will be up through May 19th, after which I'll get them down and get them to all of you amazing people who've purchased them.

Wahooo!

Kylie 8x8 acrylic on wood

sold

April 10, Mo!

 Whew!

So I'll take a wee break here, since I have to get all our tax papers in order for our Zoom appointment tomorrow afternoon- man!  Every year I tell myself I'm going to be more organized with this and I'll keep track throughout the year so this isn't such an ordeal, and then I don't do it. Mostly because I don't know how to use a spreadsheet, or how to simply organize the information. Maybe this year...?

This is Mo! Isn't he something? He's a bit of a pup yet, and is the companion of our now retired friend at school, Darryl, and I painted it for him for his retirement party. What a face!

April 7, Estrella for Joe and Charlie

I have painted Estrella a few times- she is an absolutely beautiful cat. Glowing eyes, full thick fluff, long elegant whiskers, what more could I ask for?

And I omitted the date of April 5th when I made my initial Official List... I wonder why no one else noticed that? Which means that tomorrow, Cranky Toph, is actually my last cat!  I do have a special request though, so there will likely be one more creature...

6x6 acrylic on wood

spoken for

 

April 6, Clark and Cleo

And this one took me a little longer too! I was a little afraid of it, with the darker shadows and bright lights, I wasn't sure I could get the back kitty to read well, and I'm thinking I did it!

There were a number of photos to pick from, but there is something so sweet about how they are lying together in this one- I love that Cleo's eye is juuuuuust slightly and slyly open....

Here's what Lori wrote about the pair~

They were littermates and were together for 18 years until our orange boy Clark passed away last April. We took lots of pix of them but this is one of my faves as it shows how much they loved each other! Cleo is still with us and hasn't lost her "tortitude" but she is withering away due to old age and the heartbreak of losing her bro.

6x12 acrylic on wood

sold

 

April 5, Beatrice

 My friend Cami is an irrerpressible optimist who is also a professional nanny and has lived and loved many children to adulthood. She is also an artist and one of my early art group buddies, and she sent me Beatrice to paint and I love something about Beatrice's glowing eyes and mixed grays and browns and that mysterious little chunk missing from her ear...

There's got to be a story here!

6x6 acrylic on wood

$150

click here for purchase info!

April 4, Sherlock for Bill!

Sorry this is SOOOO late!!!  I did get it started this morning, but I've been at an art teacher convention all day! I'm sure that puts a great image in your mind, doesn't it? The downtown Minneapolis Convention Center full of art teachers!  It was SUPER fun!  The main speaker this morning was Cartoonist/Writer/Teacher Lynda Barry who was just fantastic!!! SO good!  And I learned SO much and got to talk to all kinds of creative people, and THEN this evening I went to our local library, the Roosevelt Library to see local writer Lorna Landvik speak!!!!  She was SO GREAT!!!

And now I'm posting sweet Sherlock here, who Bill said lived to be nearly twenty, I think... and had some medical issues at the end that made it difficult to leave poor Sherlock alone for very long, which meant he and his wife haven't really had a vacation for a while. Such dedicated pet owners. What a face~

6x6 acrylic on wood

spoken for

April 3, Pete Wayne

What a gloriously dark cat!  Look at the shine on his fur and the gleam in that eye, and the luxuriously looooooong whiskers!

What a great face!

And here's what Charlotte says about this fella~

"Pete Wayne is a three year old Persian mix who our family just adores!  His special talent is snagging flies out of midair from any vantage point.  My boys named him; they couldn’t decide if he was going to be Pete or Wayne, so he’s Pete Wayne😊

Thank you Kat! You’ve captured him beautifully!"

6x6 acrylic on wood

spoken for!

 

April 2, Shorty!

I have to love a cat named Shorty! That sounds like a story in itself- and I believe this creature is also a Bengal cat, which leads to her amazing eyes and coloring-

My goodness! Only 7 cats left, people!

And I hope you can come by the Ivy this Saturday from 3-5 for my Closing Reception of Nature's Gaze~ I am so proud of this work!

Here is a little note Maryam sent me about Shorty, and I'm looking forward to a little longer one!

"Yes, Shorty is pretty special. She doesn’t seem to age!  I do feed her only the best (Royal Canin) and Fancy Feast. As well, living in a home that has 4 flights of stairs means she zips up and down quite often."

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold

April 1! Charlotte and Bud! For Linda and Joe!

 Although it might be Bud and Charlotte.... am I being sexist if I think a cat looks more feminine and the other more masculine? I'm assuming Charlotte is the fluffier one, and Bud the darker one with the intense expression. Hmm. Am I wrong?

Yes!  I am wrong!  Bud is the more orangey one!  These two are siblings and Linda and Joe decided to go ahead and adopt them both and they are so pleased that they did. And I had to paint them together on this stool... they weren't placed there, they hopped up there themselves. TOO much!  I also had to paint them larger, and I will easily admit that I started this painting a couple days ago because I knew it would take longer, being a bigger one... and it isn't done yet!  I didn't get to the whiskers this morning!

I'm back to school today after a long busy spring break. I still don't have my clothes unpacked yet, and my jewelry is in little boxes on the floor of the bathroom, and we keep realizing we're missing something.... either packed somewhere else or never made it out of the house after the fire. We were living in the rental for over a year, and now are attempting to start all over again in the house I've owned for 20 years... it's a bit surreal.

I'm also not in love with our memory foam mattress...

14x11 acrylic on wood

spoken for

March 31, Mabel!

 Happy Easter!  This is Mabel, because I wanted to paint her for my friend Adam and his wife Lisa, and she looks like she might like a little rabbit... because she lives with one! I'd love to paint Milton the rabbit sometime too!

It's a beautiful day up here on the Great Lake and I know we're all sad to be leaving... I hope you are having a great day wherever you are!

6x6 acrylic on wood

spoken for~

March 30, Kitty for Steve!

 This is another glorious fun-eyed cat- I love those eyes! Sometimes a photo doesn't look like it will be a good painting, but sometimes they totally give you the gift of inspiration and you roll on from there!

I didn't get a story for Kitty yet, but I'm hoping to- those eyes just tell a huge story~

I tried getting up early so I could get photos of the sunrise, and I was up and outside with the two pups, it had snowed and the lake is very wild today, but the sun didn't make an appearance below the clouds.  Darn. Those are some of my favorite versions of the lake to paint~

Well I can try again tomorrow!

8x8 acrylic on wood

sold

March 29, Marley for Melody

 And this is Marley! Wow, dang did I have fun painting this one!  Tortoiseshells have just SO many different colors in their fur, and these green eyes too, were just great to paint!

We are up in Grand Marais for Easter weekend because this year Max's 15 birthday falls on Easter Sunday and we love to come up and hang out by the lake for a couple days here and there. It's gorgeous right now, but everything is exceedingly icy and it's tricky getting around... the pups are doing well with it, and it's fun to all be together. I hope you are enjoying this wicked lion out March too!

I'm having so much fun painting these cats- and I'm switching the cat for Sunday too, because I forgot to bring Toph's canvas up here with me- so I'm painting Mabel instead!

8x8 acrylic on wood 

sold

March 28, Trudy for Molly!

My friend Carolyn asks me every year to paint several portraits for her friends and family and I love this because it makes Carolyn one of my very favorite patrons and supporters, and also she inevitably has the cutest and most interesting looking critters!

This is Trudy, who belongs to Molly, and I'd forgotten that Carolyn had asked me to paint her on St Patrick's Day, so here she is today, with her green eyes and Irish looking expression...

Isn't she cunning?

8x8 acrylic on wood

sold

 

March 27, Frank!

Here is the brilliant eyed Frank! Another really fun one to paint, and I'm pretty pleased with his electric whiskers!

My friend Gennae also painted a version of Frank, and I'm honored she decided to have me paint him too! Love those black cats~

Frank is a tiny panther. He loves to hunt and use his enormous collection of whiskers to investigate everything. He has a distinctive voice that he exercises judiciously. He’s of even temperament, unlike his frenetic genetic sister. He loves a good lap sit and a cuddle in the basket with Polly. His fur is so silky and soft. 

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold

 

March 26, Shady Kitty

 This is Sunny Kitty's sister, Shady and it's another photo that just begged to be painted- love those eyes!

"Sunny and Shady were from the same litter (different fathers).  Shady was feral compared to Sunny.  They had bonded already when I went to pick a Sunny.  Sunny was hugging Shady.  I could not not take her home, too!  Shady turned out to be a very sweet lovable kitty, though shy.  When I first brought the kittens home, Sunny would always run and hug Shady if Shady cried out!"

This is also a good example of trying to LEAVE IT ALONE when I get it somewhere I like it. When time allows, I get the painting started a bit the night before so I can let it sit in my brain all night long, and then I do the color and details in the morning. Sometimes it takes letting it sit a bit for it to really come out right.

I like this one!

Ooo, not that I don't like any of the others!  Sheesh, Kat! way to go-

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold

March 25, Miss Kitty!

 Painting a whole body of a cat is strangely more time consuming than painting just a face! This has taken me a lot longer this morning than I anticipated, although it may be possible that I'm putting off working on my taxes...

Here is what Linda wrote about this lovely Miss Kitty! And happy Birthday Mark!

Miss kitty was a control freak. Reading the newspaper was an extended event every morning. She seemed to know where our eyes were reading and would move to that article. She was a lap lover and if mark said it was time to go she would wait for him to get out of the chair and then move to the warm spot. We loved her and miss her every day. We lost her in June, Comforted in the vets office with Kat’s artwork.

acrylic on wood, 10x8

sold

March 24, Maisy Mae for Mikayla!

 Wow, sorry I'm so late this morning with this one! Technically it isn't even morning anymore. I just got back from New Orleans yesterday and had a great evening with my family rearrannging furniture and  attempting to make sense of our new/old living situation. Stuff is all over the place and I had to dig just now to find my winter boots to take the puppy out to poop in the snow before she did it on the fireplace rug! We were living for over a year in our neighbor's house, and got pretty settled in there, and now we're moving stuff back into our new/old house and it's funny how much stuff a person can accumulate in a year! We also don't have all our dressers and bookcases yet, so a lot of stuff is boxed and tucked somewhere...

Ah well. It's great to be here!

And this is Maisy Mae, who has an incredibly regal presence with all that fabulous fur.

Here is what Mikayla wrote about her!

I love it so much. The colors are beautiful and she looks like the perfect mixture of regal and goofball that she is.

I've had her for all 6 years of her life and we got her to be my emotional support animal. She's really good at her job and her favorite way to make me feel better is to talk! Her meows and trills are very expressive and they always make me smile. 

Thank you so much for picking Maisy Mae I love it so much.

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold

March 23, Sunny Girl

 Another incredible set of eyes... this was another that I had to paint. And I'll have to paint Shady too, of course!  Maybe I can get to her later today, since I'm running out of spaces!

I really appreciate having these fantastic paintings to look forward to every morning. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to paint your pets, people!

Here's what Amy says about Sunny AND Shady!

Sunny and Shady were from the same litter (different fathers).  Shady was feral compared to Sunny.  They had bonded already when I went to pick a Sunny.  Sunny was hugging Shady.  I could not not take her home, too!  Shady turned out to be a very sweet lovable kitty, though shy.  When I first brought the kittens home, Sunny would always run and hug Shady if Shady cried out!

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold

March 22, Katie the Kat!

I admit it is her eyes in this one what I wanted to see if I could capture~ what a beauty! And this is what Sandy wrote about her~ 

This is Katie! I have been catsitting for my neighbor for about eight years.  Katie was rescued from the county landfill when she was a baby. Now she lives a life of luxury and is the Queen of the house. She's very persnickety, with green eyes like Scarlett O'Hara and a temper to match!

6x6 acrylic on wood

sold