Paula's Peter Max-Inspired Pet Portraits

Paula Ogier is an unusual portraitist.

A Wisconsin native and now a Boston resident for nearly 20 years, Ogier is perhaps best known for her pet portraiture... but don't expect a straight rendering of Tiger based on your favorite photo of him slobbering on a chew toy.

Instead, Ogier’s work tends to be a little more abstract, which is part of what elevates it well beyond the vanity paintings of pets owned by folks with disposable income you might be imagining.

We talked with Ogier, who has a show coming up at the Blue Glass Café, about her relationships with animals, her artwork and the Boston arts scene.

Patch: Have you always had an affinity for animals?

Paula Ogier: Absolutely. I love how distinct their personalities can be, and have often felt I got their feelings. I occasionally anthropomorphize them, more for fun than anything, but I'm actually very conscious of the fact that we're different species operating on completely different kinds of impulses and sensory stimuli.

Patch: What is it about people's relationships with their pets that drew you to your specialty?

Paula: I think it may have been more about my own relationships with my pets, which confirmed the very special bonds that animals and people can share. Eventually I came to see those same kinds of bonds with others and their animals. And I've lost pets I loved deeply, and those experiences have probably been the most heartbreaking that I've had. Those losses have taught me a lot about the intimacy we share with our animals and what it means in our lives.

Patch: Have you always produced your work digitally?

Paula: I attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, getting a certificate in Layout and Production Art in 1989. With the advent of computer technology, in a few years the way I had learned to do commercial art - manually producing layers with registration marks and amberlith film - was near obsolete. But I gradually learned Photoshop—mainly self-taught—through years of experimentation. So now I do almost all my artwork via the Wacom "Bamboo" pen, an electronic pen and pad, and Photoshop, which lets me replicate different kinds of paint and brushes.

Patch: What do you like about working in digital mediums as opposed to 'the old fashioned way?'

Paula: I wrote about this in my blog recently. I still sometimes do paper collage, and then scan it and digitally paint it. I also digitally paint a lot of my photographs - I have done this with many city scenes I've shot around Boston. But in general, I'm not crazy about messing around with toxic substances, and because I have had respiratory challenges related to things like metallic paints, oil paints, and dusty mediums like pastels, working digitally takes that concern away. But I think for many artists the texture and earthiness of working directly with paints is an important part of the process. I think that's great too, and I also admire those people for having the patience to clean it all up!

Patch: How would you characterize your pet portraiture?

Paula: My portrait work is not realistic and it's not typical of most pet portraiture. My approach is very stylized, and the colors I use are not the animal's physical coloring. The work is intended to reflect the individuality of the animal, and that is expressed through the use of color and imagery. I do think my work is abstract to a certain extent - if it were any more abstract, it might not be recognizable as the animal! So I am always walking a line between representing the animal as a physical being and representing the animal as a spiritual and individualistic being.

Patch: Who is your greatest creative inspiration?

Paula: One of my earliest art influences was Peter Max. I first saw his work when I was an 11-year-old kid growing up in the Midwest, and I really connected with the free, happy, colorful strangeness of it. It was like nothing else I had seen. I got the chance to meet Peter Max last summer, at a reception in Providence, RI, and it was a really emotional meeting for me because there was a sense of coming full circle, evolving from inspiration to creation.

Patch: The art market continues to widen and expand, but so does the volume of people producing commercial art; do you think the Boston market is too congested?

Paula: This isn't something I've ever been concerned about. I enjoy the community of artists and appreciate seeing what others are doing. I sometimes interview local artists for my Boston Art Images Blog. I'm connected to a community of Boston-area artists on LinkedIn, and I have friends who are artists and art teachers, and all of that feeds my passion for art. There are so many different kinds of artists around, doing all sorts of different things. As an artist, I want to make a living with it, but I don't think of other artists as competition. I have a deeper sense about art being about expression, beauty, humor, and all kinds of things we really can't do without in this world.

Paula Ogier is in a group exhibit of 10 local artists from June 6 through the end of August at the Blue Glass Cafe, located on the first floor of the John Hancock building. There will be a Meet the Artist Reception on Wednesday, June 22, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.