Denise Rich, the Happy Cow Artist, does original oil paintings of cows. Do you love cows? Do you want a painting of your favorite cow over the fireplace? You really need to learn about Denise’s work.
From her website:
“A native of San Diego, Denise has been interested in both art and animals since childhood. Becoming a fine artist whose main subjects are animals was a natural course to follow. Her focus for the past several years has been cows because “Cows make me smile”. In 2006 Denise received a commission for the California Milk Advisory Board to paint their famous Happy Cows of the Real California Milk campaign. This led to becoming The Official Happy Cow Artist, as seen on their website along with the six paintings that resulted from photographs Denise took at the filming of two of their television commercials in Northern California.
“Denise takes her own photographs as reference for her paintings, and draws from the field experience while referencing the photo at the easel. The creative process begins with framing the subject through the camera lens, then it is translated through the artist’s eyes in a “painterly realism” style that satisfies a desire for a realistic, accurate portrayal, with expressive brush strokes, resulting in contemporary paintings of cows that have great presence in all decor from country to formal.
“My family on my mother’s side is from Iowa, she was born there, that means that farmer blood is coursing through my veins! The Artist part comes from my Father’s side, my Grandmother was an artist, my Father has quite an artistic ability as well, so put the two sides together and voila! You get ……Me. The Official “Happy Cow Artist!”.
“So pretty much, I did always want to be an artist. I love taking photographs, which is an art in itself, and those photographs are reference for my original oil paintings. Composition is my favorite part, although being with the subjects themselves and taking photos that will become oil paintings is pretty great too, trumped by the actual icing on the cake of working with my favorite buttery oil paints, mixing pure pigments into real life colors and intuitively brushing that color onto a fresh white canvas, until it emerges as the soul of the individual I am painting.
“I am inspired by things I like to look at, so I take pictures of them.
“I like cows, cows are cute, they make me smile when I am around them. I love the calm, curious attitude. I can relate to it, I myself am calm and curious. And guess what else, you can’t have cowboys without cows, so I started where one should start, with cows. In California, one of the top two dairy states, I don’t have any problem finding them to take reference photos even within San Diego County.
“I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.”
You can get more information at her website by clicking HERE.