THE BEGINNING
When I was a child growing up in Ontario, Canada, children were allowed to wander. Our lives were lived out of doors - in the valleys, or by creek sides - exploring, observing, or just plain ‘moodling.' Much of the time I was happily alone, and during that time I watched and tried to befriend the enchanting creatures I found around me. My earliest memories are of drawing and painting animals of every kind.
SHIRLEY HOGG
is known for her beautiful watercolor paintings of animals, both wild and domestic. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a degree in Art History. After college, she raised her two children, several dogs, made gardens and helped her husband restore and repair a pair of early Cape Cod homes. It wasn't until she was in her mid-forties that she returned to painting.
While living in Ithaca, NY, she was a member of The State of the Art Gallery, where she participated in several exhibits, including the very successful solo show in November 2016, “Awaiting the Ark,” in which she depicted stunning life-sized paintings of endangered animals.
Shirley has lived in several countries throughout her life, but has spent most of her adult life with her oceanographer husband on Cape Cod. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and their three dogs.
Today, she still paints animals, but now they are done life-size, almost always isolated against a plain white ground.
Through early exposure to paintings in the Hamilton Ontario Art Gallery, which was only a few blocks from her home, Shirley was drawn to the strong, often stark works of two very different Canadian artists - Lauren Harris and Alex Colville. But it was the Inuit, those superb observers of the natural world, who influenced her the most. To the Inuit, space is as important as the subject of the work.
By isolating a living being, away from any references to a specific habitat, she can bring the viewer into the same space as the animal, creature to creature, eye to eye.
Every creature, be they wild or domestic, fills her with a sense of joy and awe.
It is Shirley's great hope that through her work, she can convey these feelings to others.
