Penny and Libra

Penny

oils and acrylics on board

8" x 8"

A friend of mine commissioned me to paint portraits of her mom's cats, the one above is Penny and the one below is Libra.  Penny got adopted after Libra passed away.  Their owner loves orchids and I tried to allude to that on the pattern in both sofas. 

Sofa: a cat staple, like tuna.

Libra

oils and acrylics on board

7.5" x  8"

I usually make these by painting the backgrounds first in acrylic over a mask of the animal and whatever else I have in the foreground that I want to paint in oils.  When making these this time, I put a lot of paint coats on the ground to get the images the way I wanted them to look.  I did so especially on Penny, since I had painted colors I did not like at first and decided to change them.  Because of the way I paint these, the backgrounds become flat but thick, and I really like the physical boundary that forms between animal and ground.  As flat as the backgrounds are, the boundary renders them tactile.  I tried to capture that with the following pictures.

Hidey and Scruffy

Scruffy

oils and acrylics on board 

3.5" x3.5"

Hidey
oils and acrylics on board
3.5" x 3.5"


Hidey and Scruffy were my cats who died recently, Hidey in January and Scruffy last spring. I miss them both.

(follow the links, in gray, to read about them)

Jaz and Rosebud

Duet

oils and acrylics on canvas, 10.5" x 9"

Jaz and Rosie are Standard Poodles.  They're graceful and gentle giants.  Their owners love plants and have a magnificent garden.  I tried to capture some of that.

Liz and Burt

Liz and Burt form the Earth

oils and acrylics on board,  8" x 10.5"

Liz and Burt were Portuguese Water dogs, and their owners are clay artists.  They told me about taking the dogs to Colorado; and how they thought they had lost Burt, and I quote, "took off across the mountain chasing elk. That night he was spooked by coyotes outside the cabin talking to him."

Spot

Wiley Spot

oils and acrylics on board,  5" x 7"

Spot has eaten every piece of furniture in his owner's house, so I painted him thinking of "his first chair".

Ziggy

Ziggy Primavera

oils and acrylics on canvas, 9" x 12"

Ziggy loves loves to be outside, and his owner loves nature and warmth; I tried to capture that by overlaying flowers I took from Botticelli's Primavera  over the the whole "scene".

Hidey

Patterns

linoleum cut print, 20" x 14"

Hidey was my constant studio companion for 19 years.  She died yesterday. I miss her terribly. When I made this print, years ago, I was thinking about nature and it's abstraction; just as I was when I painted Through the looking Glass.

Leany was a good model

 Through The Looking Glass

oils and acrylics on canvas mounted on board,  32" x 38.5"

Leany came to us fully formed at the age of about 7.  He was a tough and awesome cat who actually had a 22 caliber bullet embedded in his lung, 2 millimeters from his heart.  We found that out while x-raying him for something else.  He was my first cat, and opened up a whole world of wonder for me.  This painting was about nature, reality, it's abstraction and simulation (believe it or not). 

Leany 1

Bath (Leany)

oils on canvas, 21" x 26.5"

This was an anniversary gift for my husband, many moons ago.