Tag: dog painter

Clair Hartmann’s Darby in Modern Dog Magazine

Nita and Darby by Clair Hartmann

This month, Shannon Church of Modern Dog Magazine profiles North Carolina dog artist Clair Hartmann.

One of the paintings the magazine chose to represent Clair's work is the Darby painting she sent me after I wrote about his death.
We both consider this painting a breakthrough, artistically for her (she felt the painting painted itself), emotionally for me (it was cathartic to see Darby again in a different light, and it enabled me to say "yes" to my new dog, Tyler). So we were both pleased — I used the term "freaking out" — when the Modern Dog editors shared Darby with their readers.

I was curious how the profile came about.

Moira McLaughlin: Did you submit your work to Modern Dog Magazine?

Clair Hartmann: No, they approached me. I'm not sure how they found me. I'm thinking being on Dog Art Today might have had something to do with it.

MM: Who selected the paintings?

CH: They asked me for specific paintings, and I was thrilled when they chose Darby.

MM: How was the interview conducted?

CH: It was a written Q + A, which I like best because it gives you time to think, and you don't sound like such a boob when it's published…hopefully.

MM: What has been the response to the article compared with other press you've received?

CH: I've gotten a few inquiries and one commission, which surprised me because thought I would get more. I look at press as a whole. The more you have written about you, the more known you are. It's all connected and it leads to other things like shows and other media. I do believe it started with Dog Art Today's blog post about my Downtown Dog Project. That's when my work started reaching other people outside of my "zone," which ultimately means more sales and commissions.

MM: Thank you, Clair, for bringing Darby's sweet face back to me in new and surprising ways. And thank you for your continued support of Dog Art Today. I think your new ad is fantastic (see right sidebar).

If you would like to get noticed on Dog Art Today, please visit my Advertisd Here page.

Visit Clair Hartmann's website.

Read Shannon Church's profile of Clair Hartmann on Modern Dog Magazine.

March 25, 2013
Two Heather LaHaise Paintings Sold at Strathmore

Mimic by Heather LaHaise, 30"x30" acrylic on canvas, sold for $650

South Carolina artist Heather LaHaise is one of my favorite painters and I was pleased to recommend her to Strathmore Unleashed!, the multi-media dog-art exhibition for which I was a consultant and participant.

Heather dropped me a note to let me know that two of the three paintings she sent to Strathmore Unleashed! sold. Congratulations, Heather. They are all wonderful.

To all the dog artists who read this blog, have you ever thought about doubling your prices?

Top Dog by Heather LaHaise, 40"x40" acrylic on canvas, sold for $875

Waterlily by Heather LaHaise, available

If you are interested in purchasing Waterlily visit Heather's website to contact her.

Read more about Strathmore Unleashed! here.

July 13, 2012
George Stubbs at the Neue Pinokothek

Five Hounds in a Landscape by George Stubbs, 1762

The Neue Pinokothek in Munich, Germany is having the first exhibition of 18th century English painter George Stubbs ever to be held on the Continent. A selection of thirty paintings, mostly from collections in England, will be complemented by drawings and prints that highlight the artist's far-reaching influence in the field of animal painting in France and Germany.

The show starts today, January 26, 2012, and runs until May 6, 2012.

Visit the Neue Pinokothek's website for more information.

Hat tip to Barbara Grossman for sending me this information.

January 26, 2012
Charming Baker’s Dogs

Dignity Rides a Tricky Pony

London artist Charming Baker is influenced by “cheap books, heroes, girls, Zulus, odd-looking women, suburbia, da riddum, family, stories, horses, dogs, packaging, summer holidays, the smell of make-up and cheap perfume, powertools, tea, tomatoes, Britain in colour.”

He’s been painting pretty much unnoticed for over 20 years. Then in 2009, he signed with music manager Pat Magnarella and became an overnight sensation at age 47. Read about Baker’s path outside the traditional gallery system here. I found his work at Viennese artist Petra Hartl’s truly awesome dog art blog Hundkunst. Translation here.

The Establishment Looks on in Wonder

That Wish Drives Us (Is Beyond Our Control)

The God Given Pleasure of Another Man’s Nightmare

What a Strange & Beautiful Thing (Grey)

Charming Baker’s website.

Seriously, visit Petra’s dog art blog. I think you will love it.

Petra Hartl’s website, too.

January 2, 2012
UK Dog Artist Sally Muir

Back in October of 2010 I featured Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne’s book Best in Show: Knit Your Own Dog. I had no idea that Sally Muir is also a talented painter of dogs. So happy to share her work, but so difficult to select favorites. Click through to Sally Muir’s website to see all her dogs.

October 24, 2011
Advertise on Dog Art Today

Is this any way to promote your art?

Five reasons to advertise on Dog Art Today:

1.) If you Google "dog art," "contemporary dog art," "modern dog art," "dog art calendars," or "dog art Christmas cards," you'll see that Dog Art Today is the #1 unsponsored link or in the top three.

2.) Incoming links from larger influential websites, like Dog Art Today, to your website help boost your own search engine ranking.

3.) Exposure to 850 – 1000 people every day who are drawn to Dog Art Today's current and archived material. Over 1,100 posts continually draw readers to this specific, niche, fine art, dog art market.

4.) It's the holidays. I can tell from my keyword analysis that people have been out there shopping for dog art, especially Christmas cards with dogs, since July.

5.) It only costs $35 to give it a try for one month (but $90 for three months is a better value). Click here to find out how to advertise. Your ad can go live within 48 hours, usually sooner.

What current advertisers say:

"Dog Art Today is an amazing resource and advocate for my fine art dog portraiture business. It brings the right eyes to my branding, and puts me in constant sight of potential new clients. Contemporary dog art is a niche market, and Dog Art Today makes it accessible to all. " – Jesse Freidin, San Francisco fine art dog photographer

"Advertising on Dog Art Today has given me more exposure and recognition for the fine art pet portraits and pet photography classes that I teach online. It's a perfect venue for me. I have students from all over the world in my class, so the international reach of Dog Art Today is wonderful." — Jill Flynn, Visual Harmony Photography

"My ad with your blog site has been very successful. I have noticed a very large increase in the number of visits and I'm hoping this leads to an increasing number of links to the site and eventually some sales. At the very least people are looking at my art. Thanks bunches." — Susan Ritz, watercolor pet portrait artist

"We have advertised for two years now on Dog Art Today, ever since we knew it was an option. We track the activity on our website and can see how visitors arrived there, so we know that there are daily "hits" that were directed from our Dog Art Today advertisement. Our business is not one that can be understood in a small ad. Online advertising has proven to the best advertising venue for us; where someone that is curious or interested can just click on the ad and immediately connect to our site to learn more about Art From Ashes." — Deb Brown, co-owner of Art from Ashes

Visit the Dog Art Today Advertising Page for all the details.

Email me if you have any questions. — Moira McLaughlin, founder of Dog Art Today

Photograph of Mrs M.E. Tyler, photographer, in Ashland Oregon, ca. 1892 from Women of the West by Cathy Luchetti and Carol Olwell.

September 20, 2011
Jonathan Swift’s Advice to a Dog Painter

Copy of Charles Jervas's portrait of Jonathan Swift via LIFE

Jonathan Swift died 265 years ago today. His advice to dog painters is as incisive as ever.

"Advice to a Dog Painter"

Happiest of the spaniel race,
Painter, with thy colors grace,
Draw his forehead large and high,
Draw his blue and humid eye;
Draw his neck, so smooth and round,
Little neck with ribands bound;
And the musely swelling breast
Where the Loves and Graces rest;
And the spreading, even back,
Soft, and sleek, and glossy black;
And the tail that gently twines,
Like the tendrils of the vines;
And the silky twisted hair,
Shadowing thick the velvet ear;
Velvet ears which, hanging low,
O'er the veiny temples flow.

— Jonathan Swift (1665 – 1745), poem included in The Dog's Book of Verse by J. Earl Clauson.

Via The Pet Museum.

October 19, 2010
Kait Matthews: Kool Dog Art

*sponsored feature*

Sir

Twenty-five years ago, Kait Matthews decided to become an actress instead of an artist. Stage productions, TV guest spots, and film roles followed. Then, a move from her hometown of Toronto to the big leagues of Los Angeles paid off with a three-year role on a soap opera. It appeared Kait had made the right choice; she had become a working actress. But by definition "working" means waiting. And eventually, Kait began to fill her hours of down time on the set by filling her sketchbook with her own work. And that work provided her a path back to her other love when her journey as an actress began to wind down (for a female in Hollywood that usually means circling thirty). Now, after graduating summa cum laude from The Laguna College of Art and Design, Kait is an artist and feels like she has come full circle. And along the way, she discovered that picking one dream over another sometimes allows you to live both.

As a painter, Kait initially focused on people, not dogs. She was drawn to the emotion of her subjects, or more specifically their eyes. An actress would know all about that, and it shows that oftentimes late-blooming artists often bring an arsenal of expertise to their work that could never have been learned in a studio.

It was the death of her friends' dog named Skye that brought Kait to pet portraits. The painting she created of her friends' beloved Westie brought them so much joy that she realized being an artist means more than a having a new career. It is a gift, one she could share with other dog lovers, and so her company Kool Dog Art was born. In truth, though, going from people to pets was not much of a stretch, because Kait believes that all animals have souls. One of the artist who inspires her work, 19th century French animal painter Rosa Bonheur, felt the same way, and Kait features this quote from Bonheur on her website:

I was only happy in the company of animals. I really got into studying their ways, especially the expression in their eyes. Isn't the eye the mirror of the soul for each and every living creature? Nature didn't give them any other way to express their thoughts, so that's where their feelings and desires get reflected.

Or as Kait likes to put it more succinctly, "Dog are people too." Indeed.

Where Are You?

Night Hound

Jack

Somewhere Out There

Sophie

To commission a portrait of your pet, visit Kait Matthews's website KoolDogArt.com. A percentage of all sales go to your choice of Kait's favorite animal rescues. Also, Kait has compiled her favorite dog portraits in her book Kait's Cainines. Click here to get your copy. It's a great gift idea for the dog art lover in your life.

October 8, 2009
Kimberly Merrill: Unleashed at Lora Schlesinger

Lenny

Kimberly Merrill’s Unleashed show opens this Saturday, April 25 at Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica. It looks like a beauty. The artist, a divorced empty-nester who decided to go to art school ten years ago and went on to get her BFA and MFA and now teach at Laguna College of Art and Design, became interested in the history of dog portraits and began her own series a year ago. This is her first solo show.

What I like about her work is not just her mastery of oils, the high-wire act of painting, in my opinion, but also her return to the primal aspect of dog portraiture. As she writes in her artist’s statement:

I realized that even with the surge in representational painting today,
animal painting as a genre, largely follows a Modernist aesthetic, and
is rarely seen in fine art or academic art circles. I want to bridge
the divide, both as an academic painter and as a dog lover and present
dogs, not as one-dimensional stereotypes, but as living breathing
spirits. In each painting, it is the domesticated individual, along
with their wild heritage that I hope to capture and memorialize, and in
doing so, bring the same dignity to them that they bring to our lives
everyday.

Merrill’s dogs have personalities, but they have animality too. It is a delicate balance she manages with a stunning expertise, inspired, she says, by 18th century painter, Jean-Baptise Oudry, renowned for the soulfulness of his exotic animals in captivity. I also see shades of one of my favorite 19th century dog artists, Monica Gray, one of the many painters Merrill must have seen in another of her inspirations, William Secord’s book, Dog Painting 1840 – 1940.

Above all, I am inspired by Kimberly Merrill as an artist who found her passion by starting a new chapter in her life, and who is not afraid to look back several centuries in order to capture dogs anew.

Lily

Napoleon

Chiquita

Whistler

Kimberly Merrill Unleashed at Lora Schlesinger runs April 25, 2009 – June 6, 2009.

Visit Merrill’s blog, Contemporary Canine, for more information. She also paints pet portrait commissions and can be reached at 949-422-8508. Having a Merrill original of your dog would be simply brilliant. If you get one, I would love to see it.

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April 23, 2009
Ziggy the Pekingese Dog Painter

Ziggy, Elizabeth Monacelli's 3-year-old Pekingese, is an accomplished though somewhat temperamental abstract painter. I am a fan of his work.

Read more here.

Photo courtesy of Barcroft Media.

March 26, 2009