Category: Artwork

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My Favorite Cat Artist in the Whole World

Dora Hathazi Mendes has a pure talent for depicting cats in watercolor.

Dora is an artist colleague who lives with her husband and family in Portugal. We have collaborated on various art activities over the last two years. We are colleagues in that we both use Fine Art America as our Print On Demand (POD) art production facility. (FAA is the largest fine art POD in the world. )

If you like cats, as most people do, and find them fun to be around, you might just find that Dora’s art a real joy to see. That’s why I decided to share some of my favorites here on my personal website. I hope you like her paintings as much as I do.

Here is an assortment of snapshots of the above work-in-progress. There are many steps involved in creating such a lifelike likeness of the black kitten – especially in the medium of watercolor on fine art paper.

Of course some cats take a more laid back approach to life. Here is Dora’s watercolor of a ginger Maine Coon cat. The Maine Coon is the largest of domesticated cats and, even though they have active hunting skills, are laid back, fluffy and friendly. Below you can see this artwork on a notebook cover, one of the popular items also produced by Fine Art America from original art. BE sure to click the picture to see the actual piece.

Here are links (click below) to Dora Hathazi Mendes and her art at Fine Art America:

Note, please, that this is not a “sales pitch” – but should you decide to purchase something from Fine Art America, Dora will earn her artist fee and FAA will pay me a (very) small ad fee.

Dora has contributed to the success of my new Artistic Face Masks website where her designer face masks have proven to be popular sellers.

You can see my work at Bill Swartwout Photography.

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Do you buy your own art?

Yes, I buy my own fine art photographs.

I have actually heard that question a few times over the years and have even seen it posted on art forums every now and then. There is a story in here somewhere – maybe akin to “the cobbler’s children with no shoes” or the “lawyer dying with no will.”

Fine art photographs by Bill Swartwout Photography

Well, our home is certainly not like that. Here is recent addition to the living room wall at our beach home. Here are two new 36″x24″ canvas prints chosen from my selection of “beachy” scenes. They are on display above the couch and is a centerpiece of the room, opposite the stone fireplace.

The photograph on the left is of windblown surf and dunes near Fenwick Island State Park. The one on the right is a gorgeous sunset over Little Assawoman Bay. These can, of course, be purchased from the place I purchased them – from my online gallery at  BillSwartwoutPhotography.com.

We now have a total of five (5) prints on canvas in that side and two other in a smaller size. We also have four framed prints adorning walls in our dining room.

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Are Art Photographers Not Real Artists?

Art Photographers Are Artists. Period.

A recent discussion over at an “art forum” had one self-centered (painting or drawing) artist complain that “Contests with art and photography are kind of feeble on the art side.” He goes on to explain it this way:

Hey, Alice, great painting. How long did it take?
“Thanks Mary, I worked ’til the wee hours every night all last week.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of work – you certainly deserve this honorable mention.”
“And here’s our winner, Bill. Kudos for the great picture of the sun setting over the canal. How long did that take?”
Bill replies, “About 1/125th of a second.”

Don’t ya just love that attitude toward photographers?

I get tired of some artists making comparisons like that. Here is my response to that self-centered complainer:

Actually one of my best selling photographs was captured in less than that 1/125th of a second. But that is only one tiny moment of the hours and hours needed to “get it right.” My best selling series (of the Indian River Inlet Bridge) has me being there on several dozen different occasions – in all kinds of weather (well, mostly good weather but in temperatures from below freezing to nearly 100 degrees (F). Oh, yeah, I’ve been “on location” from before sunrise to nearly midnight. And I have made, literally, thousands of exposures – which need sorting, culling and processing/editing down to the select few that exhibit what I saw when I made that short camera click. Yeah, maybe it would be nice to stay home, even if up ’til 2:00 AM, in my air conditioned home.

Indian River Inlet Bridge at Twilight

In summary: I sell photographs of places (landscapes/seascapes) that are photographed a gazillion times every year. But for some reason there are people who spend several hundred dollars on some of my pieces for images of the same “subject” that an iPhone captures for free. Maybe there is a reason. 🙂

PLEASE feel free to add your point of view in a comment below.