The Chamber of Commerce and Garden Club in my hometown of Oakmont, PA, is greeting spring Saturday May 3, 2008 with their first annual Oakmont Garden Party. Allegheny River Boulevard will be blocked off for the occasion from 10 am to 4 pm. I accepted the Garden Club’s kind invitation to set up my PetsPictured.com booth to demonstrate drawing pet portraits.

So if you live near Pittsburgh, consider celebrating spring at Oakmont and stop by my booth to say “hello”! I’ll be across from Today’s Market on the track side of Allegheny River Boulevard near the clock tower at Maryland Avenue. I’ll be offering a Garden Party discount of $30 on portraits and portrait gift certificates ordered before June 30. I hope to see you there! Mention this blog post for a free gift!

My third painting in the Woman’s Work is Never Done series of “work portraits” is of my maternal grandmother Doris Elliott Garlock, which was my mom’s Christmas gift for 2007. The painting, from a faded family photo c. 1945, shows my grandmother, mother of seven at the time (eventually eight), taking a break from washing diapers, raising toddlers through teens, preparing meals, and all manner of other “wifely” chores, to cut the grass with a push lawnmower: “Mow Work for Mom.”

“Mow Work for Mom,” Susan K. Donley, 2008. 15×11 inches, colored pencil on paper. Collection of Janice Donley.

View a larger version of this painting and read more about Mom’s experience minding her New Jersey homefront during and after World War II at…

Or check out gifts and gear featuring this image at Cafepress.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the series — another down on the farm — later this week…

My second painting in the Woman’s Work is Never Done series of “work portraits” is of my great-aunt Hazel, a telegrapher at the East Palestine, Ohio Postal Telegraph office: “Aunt Hazel at the Telegraph.”

“Aunt Hazel at the Telegraph,” Susan K. Donley, 2007. 11×15 inches, colored pencil on paper. Collection of Janice Donley.

View a larger version of this painting and read more about the Hazel’s experience as a “girl geek,” circa 1915…

Or check out gifts and gear featuring this (Morse) coder at Cafepress.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the series — one of my grandmother — later this week…

As promised, in honor of Women’s History Month (March), I’m unveiling a series of “work portraits” called “Woman’s Work is Never Done.” First in the series: “Aunt Teen on her Tractor.”

“Aunt Teen on her Tractor,” Susan K. Donley, 2006. 15×11 inches, colored pencil on paper. Collection of Janice Donley.

See a larger version of this painting and read more about the story behind it…

Just for fun I’ve added a Woman’s Work section to my Cafepress store to create some fun gear honoring our hard-working foremothers

Stay tuned for the next installment in the series later this week…

When I browse our family albums, I skip quickly though the dressed-up holiday line-ups with carefully combed hairstyles, but stop to linger over the “good stuff.” For me, the good stuff are the candid shots that capture a slice of everyday life. Give me wrinkled clothes and tussled hair every time! Those are the shots that transport me to another time to glimpse the lives of my ancestors, revealing moments they thought were important enough to record on precious film.

Rarest among these slice-of-life photos are those that picture folks working. When I run into those shots, I zero in for a good, long look! Teams of horses pulling wagons, sawmills, tractors, yoked oxen, feeding chickens — bring them on! I love these images and never miss the chance to ask older relatives what they remember about these chores to reconstruct the story behind the photos with the help of my mother and brother, my co-conspirators in this genealogical quest.

Woman’s Work is Never Done

Among my favorite workaday photos are those showing women at work, driving tractors or oxen, feeding livestock, manning the telegraph, as well as more traditional household chores. How arrogant are we to proclaim the late 1900s as the era of the “Working Woman”! Women have always pitched in whenever there was work to be done.

A couple of years ago, I decided to use one of these photos as the basis of a painting for my mother for Christmas: my Great Aunt “Teen” in overalls riding a tractor in the 1920s. The tiny black-and-white snapshot was beat up and faded, so the first task was scanning and restoring the photo as well as I could. Then I gathered other photos of Teen, since her face in the tractor photo was heavily shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat.

At first I planned to do the painting in full color, thinking that would bring the scene back to life. But the color sketch just looked fake — I liked the black-and-white better. Maybe I could duplicate the illusion of faded color that I often experience when I look long enough at an old sepia photo print? I decided to try using Prismacolor’s three different hues of gray colored pencils — warm gray, cool gray, and French gray — to apply subtle coloration to a monochrome image. I loved the effect and, more importantly, I loved working on the painting, a kind of narrative portrait. My respect for Teen grew as I drew and learned more of her story of helping out the family during very difficult times.

Before I finished the painting, I already knew I wanted to honor the other women caught working in my family album in a series called (naturally!) “Woman’s Work is Never Done.” Next Christmas, I gave my mom the second in the series, a work portrait of her Aunt Hazel, a telegrapher in East Palestine, Ohio.

This past Christmas my mom’s gift was a painting of her mom, taking a break from washing diapers to mow the grass with a push mower. Just in case raising seven kids wasn’t enough work!

Women’s History Month

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’m unveiling these first paintings of what I hope are many in the “Woman’s Work is Never Done” series. This week, I’ll post the paintings, along with the stories behind the women and their work. I don’t know where this series is headed, but invite anyone who has intriguing photos and stories of their foremother’s labor to get in touch with me at sue@petspictured.com.

What do the paintings look like? Stay tuned!

For the past three days (bracketing the “Super Tuesday” primary elections) the Mutts Blog at the Baltimore Sun has been running a series of articles answering the question, “If the US presidential candidates where dogs, which breeds would they be?”

• Monday, February 4, the Democratic candidates;
• Tuesday, February 5, the Republican candidate;
• Wednesday, February 6, the “also-rans”;

John Woestendiek, the Sun’s dog blogger asked to use some of my portraits to illustrate his dog blog articles. I was pleased to be asked, as it is a fun look at the candidates and the breeds!

Before you jump over there, let’s have some fun here — here are some of the breeds John chose. Can you guess which candidate inspired his choice of each of these breeds?

Go ahead, take a guess! Then surf on over to The Dog Lover’s Guide to the Presidential Election and see how you did. If you disagree, which would you have chosen?

Visit the archives, too, for great stories for pet lovers. Check the dog blog on Thursday, February 7, for an article about yours truly!

This coming weekend I will be exhibiting for the first time at the Pittsburgh Pet Expo, at the David Lawrence Convention Center Downtown. This is the fifth year for this event, thought it is my first time at it. I’m told they expect 15,000 pet lovers and many of their pets — dogs, cats, ferrets, and other critters have visited with their families in years past.

I’m at booth #33, so if you are in the Pittsburgh area, please stop by and say “Hello.” I’ll be doing portrait demonstrations and showing off fun new products featuring furry faces from the PetsPictured.com pack. Tell us you came from the “Peek over my Shoulder” blog and we’ll give you a free gift! Plus, you really will be able to peek over my shoulder and watch a portrait come to life!

Of course, there are a few other exhibitors, too! ;-) There are also entertainment and demonstrations throughout the day.

Expo hours are 10 am to 6 pm Saturday, October 13 and 11 am to 5 pm Sunday, October 14 (when there will be no Steeler game!). I hope to see you there!

Bloggers United Against Abuse

Today, September 27, a group of bloggers from all over the world are uniting to write posts against abuse — of all kinds. Naturally, I’m choosing animal abuse…

Thanks to Michael Vick, we’ve all had our awareness raised about the abusive “sport” of dog fighting. It’s not hard to see the cruelty that forces dogs — normally friendly, social animals — to turn viciously on each other. Hopefully, getting tough on such a high-profile case will send a message to other dog-fighters.

But what about the low-profile animal abuse that goes on day after day in a backyard near you? Animals chained outside to doghouses — their entire world a 30-foot circle. Crate training turned into crate incarceration. Adolescent puppies turned into shelters for chewing and digging — thrown away just for acting like dogs, because no one has taken the time to train them to behave otherwise. Un-neutered cats dumped to live off the land and bring more uncared-for offspring into the world.

This is the kind of neglectful abuse that keeps the pounds full. Millions of dogs and cats receive capital punishment by lethal injection for the crime of belonging to owners who don’t bother to learn how to be a responsible guardian. For sheer numbers, I’m guessing the victims of this kind of abuse far outnumber the poor pit bulls and greyhounds victimized by organized cruelty of dog fighting and racing.

Because of the pet portrait work I do, I’m very fortunate to deal with folks who love their pets dearly and wouldn’t dream of hurting them. In fact, many of them are quietly working against abuse by taking these neglected and thrown-away creatures into their homes and hearts.

These kind souls don’t make the headlines like Michael Vick, but thank God they are there, working in the shelters and rescue groups, fostering and adopting animal victims of neglectful abuse.

A Bittersweet “Happy” Ending

I was recently commissioned to do a memorial portrait of “Happy,” who was rescued by Jessie Uptigrove. Happy spent the first six months of her life in a cage before her previous owners apparently decided that even a caged dog was too much trouble (please excuse the sarcasm!). Jessie found her at the Forrest County (Arkansas) Humane Society shelter and adopted her. For the rest of her days, “Happy” repaid her with a joyful disposition! It was an honor to do her portrait and now to acknowledge the generosity of her human “mom” Jessie, one of many quietly waging war against animal abuse, one critter at a time.

You can read Happy’s success story on the Forrest County Humane Society’s web site, which was given in memory of Happy. If you knew Happy please feel free to tell us more about here in the comments below. Or if you’d like to acknowledge other workers in the war against animal abuse, honor them here!