Murals~Animal Portraits

The Animal Portrait Murals

In 1984, a San Francisco cat lover commissioned me to paint portraits of four of her cats.

These were all posthumous tributes, painted in window frames in a small, octagonal breakfast room.

These were fairly easy illusory spaces to create.

Near the floor on one of the short walls I painted a semi-circular niche that matched the floor boards. I placed the fourth cat in the niche.

This door on the one solid wall was a bit more tricky. It was a deep landscape and the door sill was integrated with the real floor of the room.

Fast forward 20 years. My cat lover and I lost touch, and during the gap she had several more beloved cats. Since she couldn’t find me, she hired other muralists to commemorate them.

This muralist did perfectly good portraits, but the cats appear to float on the wall and my cat lover wasn’t happy with them.

In 2014, thanks to the magic of the internet, she found me again