Blue Strokes
The best thing about writing this blog is looking at the world through other artists’ eyes. This might be my favorite story about finding beauty in everything…
Beth Stafford is an accomplished artist whose award winning abstract paintings are collected and shown throughout the world. She also is the owner of an energetic Airedale named Cassie. They live in rural North Carolina where Cassie spends hours with her nose to the window, desperate to get outside and play with the deer, the birds, and the squirrels that taunt her from their yard.
Cassie at work
One day Beth looked at Cassie’s nose smudges and saw them not as another round of window washing, but as exuberant statements about life. She saw Cassie as an artist expressing herself.
Eager to collaborate, Beth took photos of Cassie’s window markings and added her digital painting skills to produce inter-species originals she calls PiCassieOs.
Crazy Quilt
Cassie’s Nose Garden
West Wind
Wild Blue
Almost every dog artist I feature has a muse, a pet who inspires them. Beth has a partner. A dog who directs her work and focuses her talent and I think the results are simply wonderful. This is not to detract from Beth’s individual work, but for me the unbridled joy and spontaneity of Cassie combined with her owner’s appreciation and clever manipulation of mundane nose smudges is something truly special.
Beth and Cassie’s paintings are available as prints from Team PiCassiO’s blog, and on t-shirts, mugs, ornaments, and more at their CafePress store.
Leave a Reply