PET PORTRAITS ARTIST : Eric Stewart

The artist

I have painted pet portraits for my clients for 15 years. My focus is on painting superb custom dog portraits, cat portraits, or horse portraits for fellow animal lovers who will greatly appreciate having them.
I live just outside of Portland, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest. It's an area of impressive beauty which inspires me to paint landscapes, like the one below of Mt. Hood, which I did in oil on canvas.

The quality of my work

In creating my animal portraits I devote great care to bringing the images "to life." My dog Lily has growled at my portraits multiple times, and my cat Gracie once hissed and arched her back when she happened to see one of my portraits sitting at her own eye-level. I know it sounds improbable but it's true. This behavior astonished me when I first saw it, and I took it as a compliment. A client of mine told me that it happened with her dog, too.

Other portraits

I recently began painting child portraits as well, to rave reviews from their parents. I plan on including a separate gallery page in the future for my portraits of children once I have painted more of them.

Mt. Hood From the North

The soul of my portraits

I paint pet portraits with a heartfelt appreciation of the love and affection that a quality portrait represents. Artists have often placed a strong emphasis on meaning in their work, and there is no work of art that is more meaningful to its owner than their portrait painting of their pride and joy. This is why I love creating portraiture.

Award-winning painting

I haven't entered my work in competitions, but a client of mine from southern California once did. The dog portrait she entered was one I had done for her in 1995, of her Basset hound, Dillon. The competition was part of "The Artful Dog" exhibition of 2003, held at the gallery of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, California. "Dillon" was one of 149 dog-related works by various animal artists included in the competition, and it was awarded First Place - a bit of news that I found to be very agreeable, to say the least.

Testimonials for the artwork

Such official recognitions are sweet - but the more important victories are more personal. There is nothing like the satisfaction I feel upon hearing from my clients that they are thrilled with the portrait I have created for them, or when I'm told of the tears that came to the person to whom they had given the gift of a portrait I had done, which is something that I have personally seen for myself several times. It is from testimonials and reactions like these that I know my pet portraits touch the hearts of their owners. To this day, my mother-in-law tells me that her two dog portraits, which I painted for her a decade ago as birthday gifts, were (and are still) the best gifts she has ever received.

We are pet lovers too

My family and I love and enjoy our own family pets: our black-and-white Shih-Tzu dog named Lily, and our two cats, Oliver and Gracie. Our dog Lily and cat Oliver are great friends who playfully wrestle with each other for several minutes at a time - something I'd never seen a dog and cat do together before. I enjoy my pets' quirky personalities. I have indeed had some quirky pets in past years as well. I once had a cat who liked to play fetch like a dog, for several minutes at a time, which always impressed me.

I like hearing about the personalities and talents of my clients' pets. There are some really unique dogs and cats out there.

-Eric