PENPETS
PenPets is going into semi-retirement this year to give me more time to concentrate on making prints, writing poems, and helping to run the Local Color Gallery in Belfast, Maine. I’ve been drawing commissioned PenPets portraits in pen-and-ink since the 1990’s—25 years, 500 or so critters, mostly dogs, some cats, and the occasional hamster, ferret, love bird, horse, sheep, and goat. I’ll still do portraits for family, friends, and faithful clients, but I’m not going to seek out new business. Here is a compendium of PenPets I’ve drawn over the years, starting with Archie, a dapper cat, in 2023 and going all the way back to Jackie & Rose, my sheep, in 1991. (Nothing for 2002 or 2003 when I was teaching in Turkey.) I’ve chosen one portrait per year and, believe me, the choices weren’t easy! It’s fun to see how my drawings have evolved.
