On my list it says "Milton" for today, but I only just got the panel for Milton delivered yesterday and didn't get a chance to prep it yet, so I opted to paint Beany today! All that fluff is definitely a challenge to paint and get it to feel right~
So THIS is Beany!
Beany is a big dog in a 16 pound body. Brave, joyful, stubborn, cuddly and faster than a speeding BB.
Salty was a sweet little firecracker who lived in Hawaii with his loving family. Every photo they shared with me featured a huge smile!
Here's Salty's story~
Salty loved playing in the sand, giving hugs and cruising in the backpack for bike rides. Always reliable to clean up spilled cheese on the kitchen floor. He was the best good little boy!
And this is Stanley. Such a great name for a dog!
And hey my friends, if you are able to donate to your local public radio station, please do! I'm currently in Grand Rapids, listening to KAXE, and I regularly donate to the Current and KFAI in the cities...
This is Stanley's story~
This is a picture of just Stanley taken recently at a brewery. He doesn't know it but his ears are what got him adopted. My husband fell in love with a picture of Stanley on a lawn chair with one ear flopped over ten years ago.The rest is history as they say. The two of them have a connection like I've never seen. Stanley is happiest when he's with Tyler, preferably snuggling with him. Stanley can fit himself into a chair made made for one person with Tyler any day of the week. Stanley's ears were blowing in the wind when this picture was taken.
Just look at this face! This is quite the story...
Henry – Hank, Big Love, Meatball, Meatloaf
What do you do when your husband says he is ready to adopt another dog while you are on a road trip to Kansas? You start searching Petfinder in every state along the I-35 corridor! “Are you and your sister just crying and sending me dogs needing adoption?” “YES!” “You need to stop, my heart can’t take it…” Until a few minutes later, “Would you email the shelter in Trenton, Missouri about Zeus?” “What is it about this dog?” “His eyes.” And that’s how we got Henry (the dog formerly known as Zeus). The shelter isn’t normally open on Sundays, but a volunteer would be there cleaning and feeding the dogs in the morning. They gave me special permission to visit Zeus, a 5-year old lab mix who was surrendered by his owner. He sat down right in front of me and looked straight in my eyes. Oh yes – those eyes. My first words were, “Mommy is sorry it took so long to find you. Are you ready to go home?” The rest is just details of a proper adoption, but he joined me in the car, and we never looked back. His collar came off the very first day, and I feared all would be lost. Instead of running away, he ran towards me. There are no words to describe how absolutely wonderful he is. Who is his favorite? You will never know. He makes everyone feel special and loved and important. He comforted my mom when she had Covid. He made my dad feel young again. He got on the paddleboard to be closer to me on the lake (he’s the only lab in MN that doesn’t swim). And he will protect everything that Todd loves and holds dear. The two of them together – my favorite men who hold my heart. Did I mention his eyes?
And this is the first dog of the project and she is Dolly! She's got those golden eyes, and that wonderful attentive head cock that setters have, those working dogs with their patient attention.
I also loved that light on her face, and her tiny little beard!
YAY!
My pup engines are revving up, my friends! Thank you for giving me this opportunity to PAINT!
XOXO
This was a Christmas commission from this past holiday, and I enjoyed working out the variety of grays and browns on her face- There's a lot going on! One of the trickiest parts of painting from not-always-perfect-but-well-loved-photos is the puzzling together of a few images to get the piece to "read" right. The contours of a face and the kinks in an ear, and the highlights and shading of a scrunched up little face are all part of putting it together.
Any one thing I add in affects everything else, and it takes balance to get the whole thing ringing true.
I'm pretty pleased with this one! She's Noodles~ I still love that expression and those eyes!
Oh, and I'm posting this because it's time for you to send me your dog photos so I can make my list and paint my 30 Dogs in 30 Days this summer!
Here is another commissioned painting, this one for a friend/patron/client who has requested several other pieces from me. It's so gratifying when someone appreciates my work and wants to collect it. It's a rather incredible collaborative relationship, actually. One that I haven't ever taken for granted. Part of me is still that teenager who dreamt of some day painting people's pets for a living, making hand-written posters, printed off expensively and brought around to area vet offices and pet stores. I asked shyly for permission to hang them up, and sometimes I was told yes. I don't remember how many pieces I painted back then. They were all watercolor, carefully drawn from photographs, and I do remember one goat. Even back then, it was such a strange, intense, personal pleasure that someone other than family wanted my work to hang up in their home.
I'm so lucky.
I hope you have something that makes you feel lucky too!
XO
yes, I do love to paint, and I am incredibly fortunate that people do seem to enjoy my work and want it to hang in their own spaces~
This is another piece I've completed recently, of Blue, a piece for a friend's graduate who needs thoughtfully small paintings to hang in the new small place. I loved the disheveled look- who doesn't know a pup like this?
Wow, thank you everyone! I had a rather more relaxed and yet stimulating and inspiring Art-A Whirl than I'd expected! Duane and I have work hanging at Diamonds (1618 Central Ave NE, open 7-4 daily if you want to swing by and nab one of Duane's incredible wooden bird wall hangings!) and I spent Saturday afternoon there, from 3 to almost 8, sitting by the gild vault door painting commissions and talking to people. I do love painting in front of people, and I love talking about art and pets and I also love people watching so yeah, it was a great day!
Plus I was able to work on three commissions and get them to a point where I just have to do the finicky bits, and I sold three pieces off the wall in Diamonds, and with two of them the clients just paid me with Venmo and took the paintings down themselves! Isn't that great!
So yay!! And here's one of the commissions I'm finishing up!
It's Friday! And I just upped my donation to MPR! You can do it too, here, if you like~ I really love our local radio stations and support KFAI and Jazz88 too! So much good stuff!
And it's Art A Whirl this weekend, starting tonight, in the NE Arts District- I'll be at Diamond's in the Thorpe Building tomorrow, Saturday from 3 to 7pm, painting live! I may run over to the Casket Arts Building (720 NE Madison Street, Minneapolis 55413) to see my friend Terry in studio 145- she's a photographer and beekeeper and has excellent honey AND the Southside Battletrain will be parked behind her building on Saturday!
And this is a commission I handed off a week or so ago- I'm finishing up several more and that may be what I'll be painting at Diamond's on Saturday!
Hope to see you!
We had a great week last week for sure! It was busy as heck, and one of the highlights for me was the Art4Shelter Fundraiser at Quincy Hall over NE, near Centro where I had a pack of dog paintings hanging that I was able to take down that afternoon- crazy!
So I was able to paint an otter live in the evening, and enjoyed myself greatly, chatting with people, putting paint on the canvas, drinking a little wine...
And at the end, I was planning on taking an Uber which I haven't done in a while, but I had the app and firgured I could manage, and then I looked up and my friend and neighbor Melissa was there with her driving age child! They knew some of the managing folk for Art4Shelter and I said "Hey! Can I get a ride home with you guys?"
And the answer was YES! Isn't that the best? It was pouring rain, but we were cozy in the car and I think I jabbered the entire drive home, so grateful!
Here's another little 5x7 for Art4Shelter's auction next week! It will be $35! Come see if you can snag it!
Here's another little otter for Art4Shelter, which happens NEXT week at Quincy Hall in NE Minneapolis!
I'll be there for the luncheon, and I'll be PAINTING LIVE that evening from 6-9! So come see me and pick up some great artwork!
I'm loving these otters!
This one will be available in the live auction for $35! You have to wait for the bell to ring, but if you're lucky, you can nab it!
It's my littlest sister Kel's birthday today! She's an immigration lawyer living in Switzerland, working for UNHCR and she's pretty darn smart, and also level-headed most of the time. I love her~
And this is a painting from the Art Colony residency in March, of the morning sunrise, painted on gold gesso~ tricky to photograph these! You'll have to come see them in person, at the St Paul Art Crawl this Friday or Saturday! I'll be at the Schmidt Rathskeller Building, 882 7th St W, St Paul, 552102~
This particular piece would look gorgeous over a couch or above your headboard for that first thing you see in the morning~
Friday 6-9 and Saturday noon-7!
I've been trying to paint some small pieces for Art4Shelter, 5x7s on paper, and finally managed to get a few done- I love Art4Shelter and have been a part of it for the 15 years its been an event! The big night is May 1st at Quincy Hall in NE Mpls from 6-9! I will be painting LIVE along with a couple other artists- it should be FUN! I think I may paint an otter- whatever I paint, it will be available for bidding right there!
This one will be on the clotheslines, for $35, ready to be nabbed when the bell rings!
This is one I painted up at the Grand Marais Art Colony in March~ a huge beaver! I'd painted a smaller version of this last summer that sold as soon as I put it up in my tent at the St Kate's Art Fair, which was good because that was a VERY extremely rainy event with mud and lightning and oh so many brave and kind people!
This is the beaver at the Mn Zoo, on his rare swim during visiting hours so we can see him! It isn't often I've seen them moving around, and I love the features, his nose peeking above the water line, his little paws... So good!
Yes, I'm always painting commissions... I love them, sincerely. Of course, sometimes things aren't quite perfect, or a patron asks for something difficult, like combining two photos to make a single image of a pet, and the lighting is different or size or perspective, but I figure it out, and have very rarely had anything not work out.
What I love is the collaboration with other people to create this painting, this piece of art that satisfies both of us. It helps that I really love to paint animals...
It's also lovely that people who want their pets painted are some of the nicest people around, and I love getting to know them better through painting their pets...
This is Herbert. Isn't he handsome?
It is the water and figuring out the color that I love so much... I know it reflects the sky's color, so that's really what we're looking at, but there's something deeper in there. Its that you have to really LOOK... you have to shut your brain off from it's judging and cataloguing and just say to yourself "what color IS that?!" and try to paint it...
This one was just fun~
wow! We had a great time yesterday at the Capitol with 25000 of our new best friends! Thank you everyone who came out~ we also went over to the "60 on 50th" Art Fair to see friends and they all expressed a desire to have been at the capitol too. Essentially, everyone at the capitol were the people who usually attend art fairs... so if that's the case for you, you might think about going online to any of your fav artists and making purchases from there! just a thought...
And this is a painting I did up in Grand Marais at the Art Colony a couple weeks ago- it is on GOLD gesso instead of black, so it really is something you need to see in person... and I'll be at the St Paul Art Crawl at the end of April, the 25 and 26th at the Schmidt Rathskeller Building, 882 7th St W- I'll post more info soon about that!
I loved painting on the gold and I've ordered some more- it's very different from painting on black as it is luminous and shiny... though the thinking about leaving the negative spaces is similar. Choosing where to let the gold shine through is kinda crazy and fun!
I do love a good joke and a sense of humor is necessary if you are a well adjusted human, I believe-
So this is NOT a painting of a cat!
