Having grown up with dogs as a part of the family, pet photographer Joshua Oldridge has always been drawn to friends of the canine variety, and like many of us, wishes to support them in living their happiest, healthiest lives. Through bright, breathtaking photography, Oldridge both expresses his passion for canines and supports rescue dogs in their quest to find loving homes.
As a photographer and a dog lover, nothing is more satisfying for Oldridge than combining these passions to help dogs in need. On top of his professional photography sessions with dogs, Oldridge volunteers his time and creativity with three rescue groups, helping rescue dogs find forever homes by highlighting their unique personalities through photography. Oldridge believes that capturing the essence of these shelter dogs helps to express their unique voices and supports them to connect with homes that will love them for who they are.
Although Joshua Oldridge has a strong connection to canines, his interactions with dogs have not always been positive. Oldridge was bit by a rescue dog as a child, but rather than let this traumatic experience deter him, it has inspired his goal to help these dogs in need. “I realized in order to overcome I had to forgive. I was taught to face situations head-on and not run from them. This incident sparked an immediate urge to learn more about dogs and their personalities,” says this generous pet photographer.
Having worked as a hairstylist for six years, Oldridge is well versed in working with fussy clients. In his own words, “whether a two-legged or four-legged customer, each has their own personality and unique demands. Similar to the two-legged customer, not all dogs are well behaved.” For Oldridge, nothing is better than capturing a pet being themselves, and so dogs that can’t sit still are some of his best clients!
Learn more about Oldridge’s work at www.joshuaoldridgephotography.com and check out his Instagram (@joshuaoldridgephotography) to see beautiful photography and get heartwarming adoption updates.
All images courtesy of www.joshuaoldridgephotography.com
“Lively, reverent, and emotive” just begins to describe the dog portraits of Texas-based artist Dyanna Bruno. Through Pop Art tenets and bold colours, Bruno captures the intangible, exuberant adoration we have for our dogs.
Bruno works from photographs to reflect the energy within each picture. “Everyone has a favourite photo,” she says. “I try to figure out exactly what it is my clients love about that photo and emulate that on the canvas.” Bruno finds that people love their dogs, sometimes more than anything else, and that love as evidenced in photographs can be translated to canvas.
What makes Bruno’s process so unique is that, unlike many artists who work standing up using an easel, Bruno prefers to work from the ground. She’ll sit on the floor with her work set out flat on a table in front of her. From that vantage point, using just two brushes and acrylics on canvas, she brings her subjects to life. She finds herself drawn to huge pots of primary and complementary colours and describes her work as “Warhol-esque.” She chooses the colours in her paintings based on her own intuition. Together, her Pop Art sensibility and use of color magically reflect each subject’s spirit.
As a child, Bruno was always creative and, in high school, she was fascinated with drawing frogs. She holds an art degree from the University of Florida and a graphic design degree from Florida Atlantic University.
Before realizing her affinity for dog portraiture, Bruno expressed her creativity while working at a bakery as a cake decorator. She began painting almost accidentally when she came across a photo of her dog taken during Fourth of July celebrations. “The energy was so palpable in that photo, I had to paint it,” she recalls. The rest is history; she had found her calling. Since then, she has painted countless portraits.
Also a proud dog-mom to Ruccus, a Pit Bull rescue, Bruno is a huge supporter of animal charities and pet rescue organizations. Being a Pit Bull owner, she aims to break down the stereotypes that Pit Bulls are mean-spirited and wants to create awareness that it is the owners who need to take responsibility for enabling aggressive behaviour in their dogs. For Bruno, owners have the choice to either nurture the innate love in animals or enable fear.
Commissions begin at $140. To see a gallery of her work, visit mypawportrait.com.
Art by Manda is a custom art studio specializing in pet portraits hand drawn and painted in gouache using your photographs as a reference. Manda Wolfe, the artist and owner, combines her love of art and animals to create beautiful portraits that are both realistic and illustrative in style.
One of her specialties is creating comical portraits of pets that aim to reflect a unique personality trait or a funny scenario, such as a dalmatian sneezing off his spots or trying to remove them with a Tide-to-Go laundry stick. She believes that art should be as fun as the animals she's portraying and enjoys inserting a certain amount of humor into her work.
The process of ordering a portrait is entirely collaborative. You work closely with the artist to find the right reference and Manda makes sure to send updates throughout the process so minor changes can be requested. Each piece is then finished with a bright and colorful background, creating a work of art that appeals to people of all ages and walks of life.
Manda works from a home office where her own furry monsters, a dog named Abby and a cat named Dexter, keep her company. She frequently donates artwork to animal adoption organizations for their fundraisers and works as a foster for shelter pets throughout the year.
Prices start at $115. More of her work can be seen at www.artbymanda.com.
If asked the connection between clay, pastries, and paint¬ing, one might be momentarily stumped, the most obvious of answers often evading us. To artist Jean Glaser, though, the answer is immediately clear: they all involve working with your hands.
After graduating from Arizona State University with a BFA in ceramics, working at an Art Gallery in Scottsdale, and owning a café and bakery in Park City, Utah, Glaser took a painting class that intro¬duced her to portrait painting. And that was all it took. Motivated by her passion for animals, Glaser now works out of her Park City home studio full-time painting acrylic pet portraits. The portraits are more impressionistic than photographic, but Glaser manages to pack a lot of defining character and personality onto each canvas.
Of the mediums she worked with throughout her career, Glaser prefers paint. “Paintings,” says Glaser, “have a depth.” Acrylics are particu¬larly appealing to Glaser, because they immediately take to the canvas, unlike oils and watercolour, which take time to set and dry.
Glaser says her commissions are often gifts or memorial piec¬es. Her goal with each painting is to make the owners happy by giving them a connection with their animals that they can keep forever. “I call it ‘art for the heart,’” she explains. Glaser paints exclusively from photographs, which can prove challenging. For this reason, she has a detailed description of the type of photograph she needs. Through an alternating process of painting and reflecting, Glaser transforms a four by five photo¬graph into a nine by twelve portrait.
But it wasn’t always this easy. After being away from painting since college, Glaser needed a push to spark her creativity and quell her fear. Luckily for Glaser, her friends and very understanding husband helped her get back into painting and over her trepidation that her artistic work wouldn’t be appreciated. Glaser’s own pets, Zephyr, an Australian Shepherd and two cats, Zoei and Charming, help by keeping Glaser company while she works in her studio.
Over the past three years Glaser has completed over 50 com¬missioned pieces. For most artists seeing a person cry when they receive their portrait would be a bad sign, but for Glaser tears of surprise means she’s captured exactly what was hoped for, and in the case of memorial commissions, it’s often overwhelming. “About 75 percent of people cry when they see their pet’s portrait,” said Glaser. “I wish they’d laugh, but I understand the tears.”
Commissions from $200; visit www.craigandjean.com/jeanglaseranimalportraits
For artist and art educator Melissa Ferreira, a self-professed wan¬derer, creativity comes in many forms. She’s a seeker of new expressions who is led first and foremost by her keen intuition—and sometimes led in unforeseen directions.
“My decisions could seem radical to those with more tradi¬tional lifestyles,” she says of her deci¬sion to move to France from her native United States at the age of 45, after divorcing her husband of 19 years.
The pain of her marriage break-up also led her to begin sculpting dogs, which she sees as inspirational. “My attention was better spent on dogs because their unconditional love, steadiness, and gratefulness seemed like the best place to put my energy,” she explains.
Ferreira describes her sculptures as “cute and ugly repre¬sentations of dogs.” The bulk of the materials she uses can be found laying around anyone’s home: paper, old bags, glue, flour paste, and pencils. This is a concrete choice. Ferreira wants to ensure that her creativity “isn’t a slave to having access to the right materials.”
Her inspiration comes from books and neighbourhood dogs. It could be the tilt of the head or a certain posture that moti¬vates her to create. Just like a child will see an animal shape in the clouds, Ferreira will sometimes see the shape of a dog in, say, a chocolate box, and begins a construc¬tion from there. Much of her work starts with pure improvisation. Ferreira first attended the University of Massachusetts with the intent to work in sociology or psychology, but soon realized she could serve others through art. She then honed her skills at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she returns yearly to teach. Ferreira also teaches in the town she now calls home, Pont-Aven, France.
“I live in my own little bubble and am really happy there,” she says. “My art sustains me. I’m not driven by external grati¬fications like awards. I don’t even think to apply.”
Commissions begin at $400. Visit melissaferreira.net for more details.
Wendy Meagher’s hobby-turned-full time career is one made famous by the fabled, tiny men and women of the North Pole: she is a vintage-inspired toy maker creating the most magical of teddy bears.
Inspired by German toy maker and creator of the original teddy bear, Margarete Steiff, Meagher bravely abandoned her post as a computer programmer 18 years ago to launch Whendi’s Bears. The result is a bear that looks as though it was lovingly toted around by a toddler in the 19th century or gleefully recovered from one’s great grandmother’s attic. Each is handcrafted one at a time entirely by Meagher. Surprisingly, she has no background or training in toy making, just a lifelong love of arts and crafts and, as she puts it, “old things.”
“I always loved vintage and antique bears,” states Meagher. “I try to make the bears look like they’re 100 years old already.” Using only the finest materials, such as German and English mohair and aged leather, Meagher sews the body of the bear from patterns she’s designed, then fills them with wood wool. The character really begins to emerge in the careful sculpting of the face, which determines what type of animal it will transform into. Once the head is complete and the species determined, the real fun begins—accessorizing. Here Meagher must decide if the dog/bear/elephant will be a boy or a girl, a clown or a sailor, clothed or au natural. Found treasures such as antique shoe buttons and poker chips are used for the bears’ eyes, noses, and accessories: “If I find something I want to use, I make it (work),” she tells us. All of the clothes are handmade by Meagher using vintage textiles, laces, and trims found at antique shows, shops and on eBay.
When asked what her favourite piece is, Meagher names the French Bulldog and Boston Terrier as her most loved. One must assume that her own Boston, Zoe, has something to do with this personal bias. “She’s been a huge inspiration, just by having her face here every day,” Meagher gushes. “I use her as my big drawing board.”
Bears start at $200; visit whendisbears.com for more details.
As many of us can attest, career paths are rarely straightforward anymore. But even for those who have come to expect twists and turns, the people, places, and things we encounter along the way can still change our trajectories in surprising ways. For artist Nicole Momaney, it was tiny, bejewelled, cast metal animal figurines that forced her to recognize her passion for critters and ultimately led her to the world of pet portraiture, a perfect, if unplanned for, vocation for a multitalented artist with a love of nature and animals.
After graduating with a BFA in Illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art in 2000, Momaney moved to Brooklyn and began working at Jay Strongwater, maker of said bedazzled handcrafted marvels, where she designed and painted his much soughtafter Swarovski crystal encrusted pieces.
Following her four years in the Big Apple, Momaney relocated to LA, but knew that the passion she’d developed for painting animals would have to find another outlet. A friend’s recounting of a successful pet painter with a studio in the West Village was all it took to prompt further research into this idyllic craft, and soon after Momaney’s portrait studio, Painted Pet Menagerie, was born.
Momaney’s passion for painting flora and fauna was first sparked as a child growing up on the edge of protected marshland. Her time spent in the woods “catching salamanders” and exploring the world existing beyond her fence undoubtedly influenced her desire to connect with nature through art. This may also have led to her fascination with taxidermy, which is reflected in select pieces. Momaney hopes to incorporate oceanic skeletal imagery in an upcoming painting, more specifically, dried coral “bones, ” explaining, “Ernst Haeckel’s renderings are a perfect example of what I imagine.” Her process begins with an excess of photographs and personal details of her animal subject(s) including nicknames, favourite treats or, in some cases, favourite pajamas.
On average, she’ll devote 25 to 35 hours on each painting, a large portion of that time spent focused on the subject’s face, the crux of any successful portrait. Influences as diverse as Momaney’s self-proclaimed hero, Walton Ford, a painter of large scale watercolours in the manner of Audubon’s naturalist illustrations, and Art Nouveau-era painter Alphonse Mucha, whose ornate backgrounds have echoes in some of her work, have coalesced into a style all her own.
Commissions from $300, visit paintedpetmenagerie.com.
Toronto artist Paul Boddum credits an assertive friend for dragging him to a local pet show and forever changing the course of his career, eventually launching his foray into pet portraiture. The inspiring personalities and energy that the dogs exuded at the show were the catalysts in his ultimate transition from early-childhood education daycare teacher to professional pet artist.
Although the shift into his full-time creative life transpired in recent years, Boddum has been painting dog portraits part time for over 20 years.
“I was more and more drawn to spending my days in the studio making art,” states Boddum. “It was one of those work/life balance issues.”
It’s likely that being adopted himself has sparked Boddum’s insight into the connection that his clients have to their pets, especially to those that have been rescued. “I didn’t realize until much later that maybe that (connection) had something to do with my choice of subject.”
Aside from studying visual arts at York University for one year, Boddum is mainly a self-taught artist. He describes himself as a figurative painter who uses a contemporary mix of both representational and abstract elements. The portraits vary greatly, but one aspect that remains consistent is his treatment of the background not as an area of focus in the painting, but instead as an extension of the animal.
Each commissioned piece is a collaborative and interactive process that begins with a consultation to get a sense of the relationship between the client and his or her pet. Boddum hopes to convey the meaning that the animal brings to his clients’ lives and the distinct personality of each dog, whether it’s expressed by the colour, look, or stance captured within the portrait. “I try to take the idea of the pet right out of it, and just look for the soul and their inner beauty,” he says. In the end, Boddum hopes that when the owner gazes upon the painting, they feel reflected back to them the connection they have with—as he puts it: “that animal, their pet, their family member.”
Commissions start at $850, paulboddum.com.
Artist Heather LaHaise’s resonant work pairs realistic portraiture with modern, minimalist backgrounds to create a genre all her own. And this is exactly what LaHaise is trying to do: infuse enough abstrac¬tion into each piece so that it’s difficult to pigeonhole her work into one category or another. “I always want to show the dog, but not too much of it,” LaHaise says. “I want people to really think about and consider the dog portrayed in my work.” She does this masterfully.
A fan of the underdog, LaHaise finds inspiration from rescue sites and especially loves depicting crossbreeds in her work. “All dogs are worthy of painting and deserve a voice,” she says. “They just don’t have the same awareness that humans do and we can learn from that. If they could talk, I think they would tell us to be true to ourselves.” LaHaise has always been true to herself and recalls painting dogs already as a young child.
At that time, she was fascinated by Snoopy and would draw him whenever she could. This earned her written recognition from Charles Schultz himself. The letter of accolades and encouragement he wrote to her still hangs in her studio today. LaHaise later majored in studio art at the University of South Carolina and then moved to New York to continue her studies at the Pratt Institute.
Working with acrylics on canvas, dripping and spattering an urban sense into her work, she describes her technique as “thoughtful dis¬array.” Some of her backgrounds can have up to 20 layers. When painting a commission, though, her process is a bit differ¬ent. Working from just a few photos, it’s really important to LaHaise that her clients guide the process. She has an uncanny ability to intuit what her clients want; therein lies the extreme versatility shown in her work. From regular gallery showings to a feature article in the New York Post, LaHaise has come a long way since her Snoopy-drawing and art school days. She admits that she abso¬lutely loves her life and that she is very fortunate. When she’s not working on a commission, she’s busy painting her own pieces and being a mom to both her son and her two Pit Bull mixes, Charlotte and Justine—both rescues.
Commissions begin at $350. To contact LaHaise, visit heatherlahaise.com.
Ken Bailey is a prime example of how doing what you love can breed success. What he loves is portraying dogs as “art stars” and celebrating them as the special, loving creatures that they are. Reminiscent of vintage advertising posters, his paintings evoke an emotional connection, a moment of pause, and a smile.
At first glance, his work appears deceptively simple. But on closer inspection, it’s ripe with contrast, movement, and hardline precision. Using acrylics on canvas, he first paints the lettering. This is the most laborious part of the process and can take up to a week. He then goes straight to paint and just roughs out a design before he starts. For Bailey, it’s how the catch phrases, the dog, and the product in each piece all work together that makes a painting successful.
Bailey recalls always having loved art. His first piece was a pen and ink tree. “My parents really liked it,” he remembers.
“I found out then that I was pretty good at it. You get credit for what you’re good at. If you’re not good at something, it’s always a struggle.”
Before Bailey embraced art as a career, he worked in advertising and marketing. Staying true to his passion, he soon left that field to open a gallery of Northwest Indian art. He’d display some of his own work on occasion. The first dog he painted was his wife’s Giant Schnauzer, Genny. “People really liked that painting. So, I started doing other dogs and it just went from there.”
While Bailey took art classes in junior high and high school, he’s primarily self-taught. “If you have the basic techniques down, I’m not sure what art school can do for you,” he says. “Sometimes school can over-teach people.” He also shies away from awards and competitions: “I don’t care what judges think, I care what people think.”
Bailey currently owns two dogs that he adopted from a rescue and feels it’s important to give back. He regularly donates pieces of art to rescue fundraisers. “If I ever won the lottery, I’d give it all away. The people who run those organizations are incredible and so giving and selfless. I do my part, but I wish I could do more.”
Prices begin at $245 for original paintings; commissions begin at $2500. To contact Ken, visit kenbailey.com.
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