Purrfect pictures
A catalogue: how four local artists treat cats
Cats and artists come together in two places: cats in the studio and cats on canvas. Some cats belong in both categories.
I asked some of Hamilton’s leading artists to tell me about their relationships with cats.
Cora Brittan has had cats in her home and in her studio.
“I love cats,” she says. “Before we travelled so much we had four cats, or should I say they had us?”
She excels at mixed-media works, printmaking and calligraphy, among many things. Her subjects include humans, birds, fish and hybrids that inhabit land, sky and water — and cats, lots of them.
Some of the cats in Brittan’s paintings are small, but serve as essential characters in wonderfully fanciful narratives. But for “Cat in a Ginkgo Tree,” she let Higgie take centre stage.
“We rescued him as an adult and undoubtedly full of quirks and foibles,” she says. “He was desperately afraid of doorways and would deliberate for ages before taking a desperate, sailing leap across. So I painted him looking sublimely content in a ginkgo tree.”
A smiling, well-fed ginger cat sits atop an equally robust, highly patterned tree, and looks out at us. Six tiny birds sit in some of the branches. A full moon shines on this happy scene.
“Higgie was huge, a barrel of a cat swathed in gorgeous marmalade-coloured hair,” Brittan says. “He liked to come into my studio, walk across my paint palette and then continue strolling around leaving a variety of colours in his wake.”
James Gummerson, too, used to live with cats.
“My last cat was a neighbourhood wanderer just like the cats in my paintings. I even put him into a painting a few years ago. I love how cats walk through the streets and seem to own the neighbourhood.”
Gummerson excels at local urban and rural landscapes. He works in a lifelike, yet highly textured style.
“Sometimes animals do show up in my paintings, including cats,” he says. “I have a lot of paintings with cats in them. Sometimes you have to look for them. Almost like urban wildlife.”
Gummerson found his perfect spot for “City Garden #4” in the Kirkendall neighbourhood. He fills the foreground with an abundant row of varied flowers and shrubs that almost obscure the houses. And someone else is almost obscured as well.
“Since I tend to paint gardens in urban spaces I see a lot of cats running around the neighbourhood. As I was doing some sketches for ‘City Garden #4,’ my eye caught sight of a black cat sitting in the bushes which I hadn’t noticed previously. It was very well hidden. In the painting I put the cat in a hidden darker area in the bottom left corner. I use the right hand side to distract viewers to look there first and hopefully discover the cat later, as I had.”
Ruben Zellermayer lives with cats, draws them and sculpts them. In “Cat 2,” a big, well rounded feline completely dominates the composition. Zellermayer evokes its fur through tight, cross-hatched lines. This is one of a series of near-monochromatic drawings of cats.
E. Robert Ross is a landscape painter who works in a lifelike style. He has never painted a cat. But a cat took over the house and studio three years ago. The black and white feline, Constanze, is named after Mozart’s wife, says Wendy LeighBell, Ross’s wife.
“Constanze helps with the painting by climbing up his easel. This happens when he has a small painting on the go and she can climb up the ladder of different slots for the shelf on which the painting in progress rests.”
The art by Brittan, Gummerson and Zellermayer is available through Earls Court Gallery.