If you’re anything like me, you Love any opportunity to celebrate your cats! Here’s a great opportunity to get your pets down on canvas…

I discovered Queen of h’Arts on Facebook, and commissioned a painting of Looby and Mia (we hadn’t adopted Egg at the time). We’d lost Looby to cancer the previous year and had only recently adopted Mia, and I thought it would be lovely to have a picture of the two of them together, despite them never having met in real life. Here’s the result, which now has pride of place in our living room – fantastic, isn’t it?

The artist behind Queen of h’Arts is Genna Parker-Harman from Kings Heath in Birmingham. Genna studied Fine Art at UWE Bristol and has taught art to 11-18 year olds in her home town for over 12 years.

Genna has always loved portraiture. She admits she sometimes struggled in Art School and often felt a little pressured to create contextual or abstract works whereas she was until then just drawing or painting for pleasure or for capturing realistic accuracy. It took her a while to find her confidence as a commercial Artist and to realise it was ok to just do what she loves again, and along with her art, what she really loves is cats.

Queen of h’Arts emerged when she moved house and impulsively decided to create a few quick designs of her pets to adorn the freshly painted walls. Genna is the owner of 4 gorgeous rescue cats herself, some from rescue centres, some that have just found her.

It was after sharing her project on social media that she realised there were plenty of others that wanted their pets on walls, and loved her bright and modern style. And so a little rainy day activity gave her the confidence and motivation to keep the work and ideas coming. She’s also produced posters and prints to help raise money for local cat rescue centres.

Queen of h’Arts works mainly with acrylic, watercolours, inks and paint pens and sometimes digital painting too. She creates bespoke illustrations, letting customers choose from a range of colours to match their home, or even adding amusing or quirky accessories to capture the character of their pet.

This is just the beginning; she has lots of ideas for working with mixed media, collage and fabric. She would also love to see her cats in print on home furnishings and stationery.

They’re a popular and affordable purchase as a present for a loved one, and often (like with our Looby) as a wonderful way to treasure the memory of a passed pet. If you’re looking for something special in terms of pet portriats I can highly recommend you get in touch with Genna to discuss what you’re looking for – as well as being an exceptional artist, she’ll keep you involved in the process from initial design right through to final finishing touches.

Interested? I thought you would be! You can find out more and get in touch via her Facebook page here. If you have your own pet portrait commissioned (she does all types of pets, not just cats), I’d love to see it – so do come back a share a photo!

Thanks for reading,

Emily

www.emilyfowlerwrites.com

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