Okay -- This is a leap for me.  Writing about me and my art!  What I love to do most is paint. Dogs, cats, people -- all of the above.  My present passion is painting pet portraits.  Predominantly dogs.  Being an animal lover -- it's a wonderful way to combine two loves - animals and painting.  We presently have one dog, two cats and a horse. Cody, our mixed Golden & ?? is our pup. We call him our "grand-dog" since our daughter, Sam, brought him home 6 years ago asking us to just keep him for a few weeks.  We just recently lost our German Shepherd, Ruby, in December.  That's been difficult -- for all of the humans and Cody.  More about the other critters in upcoming posts.
How did I get to the place of painting pet portraits?  Well first my daughter Katie moved to Colorado - 1500 miles away from me! :(  I was working on a portrait of a little girl at the time and incredibly frustrated with it.  I decided I needed to do some "fun" painting and thought it would be fun to paint our pups to send Katie to remind her of home.  I had a blast!  And people loved them!  So that's how this adventure started.  More soon...
 This is that first painting that I did of Ruby for my daughter.  This one is actually in acrylics.  I now work predominantly in oils.