My earliest memories involve trying to get close enough to animals to touch them, and then learning to control a pencil well enough to draw them. Many years later, it still consumes me. A lifetime of pet owning and exploring art led to a series of portraits of my best buddies combined with favorite classic paintings, and after twenty years of enjoying this theme I'm still fascinated.     In addition to painting pets in classic paintings, I've taken the techniques I've learned and applied them to my own work. I've practiced the daily painting routine for a while now - still almost always animals but without the pearls.

a note about materials
I use acrylics for my old master studies, which seems odd, I know.  In the middle of my career I developed a severe allergy to solvents and had to abandon the oils I'd used since I was ten. It was a sad parting of the ways- until I realized that the classic technique of underpainting and glazing that had been unavailable to me (the drying time of solvent based glazes was far beyond my patience) was now a sensible choice given the short drying time of the acrylic mediums.  I tried out the theory by using much loved old master paintings for references, and was entirely satisfied with the results. It was a short, happy step to substituting my pets as subjects for these studies. I'll never go back.