A Pig Dog is My Muse

When I’m not being the dogmother to my 2 pooches, writing blog posts and articles, walking neighborhood dogs or cooking, I spend my time painting. And, despite how I lined up that list of responsibilities and passions, I actually spend a large portion of my day painting. I make a little bit of a living off of it.

Guess what I paint? Do you give up? I paint custom pet portraits.

This time of year, business is booming, so I spend even more of my day hunched over my canvases, arting up a bunch of puppies.

Art has been my passion since forever. I draw and doodle and paint. I’ve painted with all kinds of different media, from oil to acrylic and watercolor. I’ve painted on paper, glass, canvas and wood. And I’ve painted in all sorts of different styles.

When we were living in Grenada, I began painting vintage-style maps. The more I painted them, the more I splashed the paint and created a great big mess.

But I liked the mess. I liked the effect of the colors mixing and the looseness of the form. I liked the freedom that allowed me with the backgrounds of the paintings. And my customers liked it as well.

Now I use that form with my pet portraits. I use bright and bold colors, reflecting the vividness of our pets’ personalities and the vibrancy that they bring to our lives.

I love it. I love how they turn out and I enjoy making the paintings.

But, because I have this niggling little feeling that my style may be mistaken for laziness or perhaps even an inability to paint realistically, I thought I’d paint my very favorite subject and artistic muse. I painted the Pig Dog.

It’s not the first time I’ve painted her.

It’s not the first time I’ve created art featuring her.

And I’m not the only one who has the Pig Dog decorating their walls. Prints of my Pig Dog art has been sold on UncommonGoods and are in states across the country.

I consider myself fortunate to have a dog who is both willing to hold as perfectly still as a statue for photos and wiggle into my lap while I paint. She is my muse and my companion and my little Pig.