Sandra Severson

It’s a long and scandalous history.

We artists are passionate creatures and spend long hours seeing, intuiting, and communing with the objects of our paintings. Renoir, Monet, Manet, and Rossetti, to name a few, have all had their own stories of illicit romance.

In my world, the potential is a lot less dramatic. The models I paint are animals.

Goats and pigs, horses and dogs, foxes and donkeys—each is precious and unique. Every one of them demands, “Look at me! Here I am!” The power of connection that a painting requires is seductive. It creates a bond in the artist's heart.

Sometimes, at the end of a long day at the easel, I want to leave a flake of hay, a biscuit, or an apple to feed my friends on canvas through the night. Embarrassing but true, I miss their presence when the paintings are delivered, and if, later, I happen to see an animal I’ve painted, I’m often misty-eyed with emotion. It’s like running into a long-lost love. Sometimes they remember, others not so much, but I get a charge out of them in any case.

A great horse portraitist from the 20th century, George Ford Morris, confessed that he used to whisper into the ears of his subjects, “You’re MINE now!”.

I know the feeling. But for me, much more than that, I am theirs’.