Paintings With Soul

  It’s been 20 years since I began Painting a Dog a Day , the daily pet portrait project that went viral before virality was even an internet thing. It positioned my signature loose and personality packed style at the forefront of pet portraiture at a time when consumers were first purchasing online products. My unique-at-the-time model of partnering with animal centric non profits, helping tell their story while also raising much needed funds for operating expenses, was adapted by many other small business owners. And the practice of painting daily continues to serve me well 25 years into my journey as a professional artist. Last month my online pet portrait workshop opened to great acclaim - we had a countdown to the first day and the students got immediately to work - I can’t stop beaming over what they are creating, it is amazing!   Shifting from independent work alongside gallery and teaching commitments to portraiture requires a serious mental shift (which is one of t...

  check her out, make her yours Wish, 20x20, acrylic on cradled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1900, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. I voted Tuesday in the primaries here in Michigan (along with My Better Half - this was the second time he, as a new US citizen, was able to vote, and it is wonderful to share this together). I may be a glutton for punishment, but I felt a sense of hope after doing so - not just because his voice is now counted, but because we do have a say in what we want for our communities. In a world that seems hell bent on all sorts of horrors, Hope is a powerful thing. That’s what this painting is all about - the fervor behind a wish, and the agency to manifest it. Wish is available for purchase on my website where you can an also view her in a room setting or get your nose right up into the marks...

check her out, make her yours Flutter, 12x12, acrylic on cradled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $950, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. NOTE: I have a 20” similar (unfinished) painting, along with a 6” square piece. Neither of these are currently available . I first painted Butterfly Masks on Bear this last spring. The results were intriguing to me, but I was particularly challenged by my treatment of Bear and Butterfly as two separate living beings. That prevented me from allowing the collision to become something new and evocative. I switched out Butterfly with florals and sky, knowing I could take artistic license with those forms and not have a mutilated life on my hands, and had multiple goes at various iterations. I also was inspired by the varied life forms in the Dungeon Crawler Carl  series of books (which I ...

check her out, make her yours Thistle, 16x16, acrylic on cradled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1450, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. This painting is an empath watching a loved one ache, knowing the best they can do is listen, sit with and love them through it. I think we’ve all been there at some point or other…. In lighter news, my online pet portrait workshop opened yesterday - students from all over the world are eagerly introducing themselves and setting intentions for the course. This evening is our zoom launch party (the 23rd) at 7pm eastern. I’ve opened this session up to students and the public - I’ll show over 100 of my portraits, talk about concepts and compositions, share some tips culled from the last 25 years of commission work, and get us situated to push some paint. You don’t have to be enrolled in the cla...

check her out, make her yours Phosphorescent, 20x20, acrylic on cradled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1900, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. Originally Phosphorescent had a dahlia over each eye. It was interesting and oh so beautiful, but distracting. The flowers overpowered her face and she became secondary in the painting. It was not what she wanted at all - she pushed herself back to the surface of the painting, and in the process that second bloom dissolved. I think this approach is still intriguing, but would be better suited to a full body Bear, with a stronger ratio of Bear to Flower. Like I said, I learn new ways to approach this concept with each painting. I have another one in process now where Bear’s mask is veil like, drifting across her face with the lightness of cottonwood. There’s something interesting that...

Profusion check her out, make her yours Profusion, 20x20, acrylic on cradled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1900, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. This was a challenging painting week - as the complexity of these masked bears grows, so too does the difficulty level. I am literally learning on my feet as the pieces progress. Which frankly is one of my favorite ways to learn - by doing! Profusion hit a point where I thought she had further to go, but my critique group (yesterday) declared her finished. I weighed the possibility of stopping,** but ultimately it felt like I was copping out. So this morning I deepened her value relationships, added a passage of smaller marks, pulled one of the flowers forward and allowed the barely suggested eye to disappear. I am so pleased to have taken these risks - the painting is all the...

check her out, bring her home Room to Grow (Sun Bear), 18x24, acrylic on cradeled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1900, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. Originally Sun Bear was stacked with Butterfly and Moth. I loved the idea, but the execution felt predictable. I value unexpected elements in art, and wasn’t seeing any of them in her early beginnings but for one little exciting butterfly passage, which frankly wasn’t enough to support the entirety of the surface. So she sat in the studio and watched me paint a number of Bears, complete with Masks of Butterflies and Florals, while waiting for the concept to evolve inspiration to hit. And a couple days ago she asked for her own mask, one threaded with roses. “Yellow, please,” she said, “to match my collar.” Meanwhile, Sun Bear introduced me to Moon Bear. I have a Spirit Be...

check her out, bring her home Summer Solstice, 20x20, acrylic on cradeled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $1900, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. This painting got her start last week at my friend’s house . She (my friend, not Solstice) invited a group of us to gather and paint in her garden ( her roses killed me) . It was a glorious day. Then she (Solstice, not my friend) came home to the studio for more work, informed by photos I took that first day along with bits and pieces from my own garden. I toyed with the concept of symmetry - in a square painting, a balanced design becomes critically important. Initially I was reaching for a mirrored take on that, but it was too easy to look at and move past - it didn’t grab the viewer and ask them to stick around. So I found a middle ground - some symmetry, some differences. Here...

  check her out, bring her home Rose, 24x30, acrylic on cradeled panel (no need to frame, painting will arrive wired and ready to hang), $2800, available exclusively through my website. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. If you’ve been following these Masked Bears , you’ll have noticed how the floral aspects are unique to each. It is great fun to dream up the next iteration, choose the appropriate Bear expression, and start to paint the magic. And it’s so rewarding, as the end results manifest with so much more strength than I could have imagined. These are all pulled from my visual memory banks, laced together by proprietary means and techniques that do not involve Ai. They are 100% human conceived and executed - something I’m starting to value more and more lately. Rose is now on my website for your direct purchasing, along with viewing in a room or right up close, until I offer her to the genera...