How I fell into painting pets in my senior years

CATS LOVE BOXES, AND HUMANS LOVE PET PAINTINGS: Margaret Cooper, 84, learned to paint watercolours just two years ago. This is "Dot in a box".

BY MARGARET COOPER

About two years ago, Bill Forrest told me he had joined the ‘Dive into Water Colour’ group at church, and that he was enjoying it very much.

It was a time when my husband, Ted, was not well and I had dropped out of most of my responsibilities and activities, and I wasn’t doing much. I thought, “I should do that, too. It will be a change of pace for me.”

It turned out to be a lot more than a change of pace. I loved it and I took off. I was hooked.

I can’t look at creation the same. I see things I didn’t see before.

I started to produce some fairly decent paintings of flowers and scenes and sailboats, and then I decided to try a picture of my niece’s very old cat, King. It turned out really well! So then I took on a friend’s hairy little dog, Jerry, as a Christmas gift for her. I don’t do hairy little dogs very well so I wasn’t too satisfied with that one, but she was thrilled. Ah, people really like to get paintings of their pets!

It wasn’t long after this that the same Bill asked if he and Irene could commission me to do a painting of their little Aussie labradoodle, Cooper. I felt I wasn’t ready for a responsibility like that, but I gave it a go anyway, and ended up doing three paintings – Cooper the puppy, Cooper the scruffy one-year-old, and Cooper more mature. I know I can paint dogs better now but Bill and Irene were very happy with the result.

That got me started painting people’s pets, cats and dogs so far. I have done big dogs and little dogs, dogs living and dogs deceased, smooth dogs and curly dogs and hairy dogs. (I still find the latter more difficult). And varied cats. I think the most interesting piece so far was a collage of Lynn’s five favourite pets, three dogs deceased and two cats still going strong. That was a challenging project, but it turned out nicely. I feel very rewarded when people are so happy when they see their paintings.

My style if fairly detailed and realistic. I paint from good, clear photographs and digital images. People express surprise that I took up water colour at age 84 and ask if I had actually been painting before.

Truth is that ever since school days I was considered to be artistic, but I never committed any time or attention to it. I dabbled in many mediums over the years with night school courses and passing phases – paper tole, silversmithing, lapidary work, handformed pottery, oils class, charcoal sketching, drawing with the right side of the brain, silk screening, batik ....

But now I am concentrating on water colour and I paint nearly every evening. It is a blessing for me to have discovered such an absorbing and fulfilling new interest at this time in my life.