Portraits of pooches
One of artist Kelly West’s portraits of her dog, Ocean.
For the last year Kelly West has painted 40 portraits of dogs in Whitefish.
Sara, one of artist Kelly West’s dogs, is featured in the Dogs of Whitefish series.
Artist Kelly West spent the last year capturing the "Dogs of Whitefish."
Artist Kelly West refers to her work as sketches — moments of time captured in art, loaded with the day’s events and emotions and everything else leading up to brush meeting canvas.
West asks herself, “What is important to me right now that I want to put down and let people see on the canvas?”
“It’s a great way of communicating,” she said. “It’s like a little mark in time of what the artist is experiencing emotionally that day.”
For her most recent project, West chose to capture the many faces of man’s best friend in a series of portraits. West presented seven of her “Dogs of Whitefish” portraits at a recent showing at The Walking Man Gallery, and the dogs will be on display through the rest of February.
Forty portraits came out of the two-year-long project, including the faces of her own yellow lab rescues, Ocean and Sara.
The project began with portraits of friends’ dogs, with West incorporating the impressionist style she’d been developing over the past couple years. After she’d done several portraits of different animals, including dogs, she decided to focus in on canines and make a series of the project.
West usually starts with a few photos of the dog to work from, but it’s not uncommon for owners to drive their dog, sometimes traveling for hours, so she can meet her subject. West prefers to wrap up each sketch within a week, and when the finished portrait is presented to the owner, there’s usually no shortage of emotions.
“It’s typically tears and laughter,” she said. “You have photos and everything, but this is also a thing where you know if somebody is spending the time to develop a painting of their pet, they must have loved them dearly. You know how much it means to them.”
West recalled a memorable portrait she’d painted for her friend Sarina Hart, who was separated from her dog while traveling with her acting troupe. Hart even postponed her return home to continue searching, but to no avail. The loss was devastating for Hart.
“A lot of our friends from around the community got together, put money together and called me up and said, ‘OK, we’ve got to do this for Serena,’” West said. “That was a huge one. That was her dog-mate, and it was really hard to lose her. We really have such a loving, connected community here in Whitefish.”
West’s passion for art was fueled by her father, Gary, who split his time as a musician and an artist. Creativity was a staple of her childhood in Alabama.
“Every picture when I was a kid is me with a marker in my hand making something,” she remembers. “Just knowing it was pure love, and I think that came from my dad really encouraging me to express myself.”
For the last five years West has focused her art on oil painting in the impressionist style used in the portraits, diving in head first to explore the style and learn how to control it.
“I was just kind of ripping canvas apart and going for it: abstract stuff, color studies, trying to figure out how it works,” she said. “I guess in doing this concentration of this impressionist style it’s allowed me to kind of focus on letting stuff happen in the art and really being fully engaged in the process.”
Like her father, West’s creative endeavors alternate between art and music. She led “Kelly West and the Deadbeat All-Stars” as a singer and guitarist until she injured her hand snowboarding, and last summer she returned to her musical roots as a drummer and performed in the improv group Dog House.
Taking time to work on a beat before the day’s work is how West prefers to get her creative juices flowing.
“It’s just a good way to kind of let that energy out and feel like you can create. You can change things and make a difference,” she said.
For her next project, West wants to take the impressionist style from canine portraits to oversized human portraits, where capturing the subject’s personality becomes a bigger challenge.
“An animal has a big snout and colors, and for a person it’s really easy for it to not look like a person,” she said.
However, it’s those challenges that drive her and keep her passion interesting. West also credits Peter Edland at The Walking Man Gallery for constantly nudging her in the right direction.
“Peter is really great about telling me, ‘just do what you love. What you’re not doing and you really want to do, do that. Keep going toward that,’” West said. “And that’s a good way to keep it fresh. ‘What am I avoiding that I really want to do that maybe could be a challenge?’ Go there, dive into it and explore that.”
West also applauds her friends Neil Stuber and Shawna Moore for giving her feedback on paintings and design.
“It’s extremely helpful to have people in art to bounce ideas off of, collaborate and listen. I’m forever grateful to those who want to help me take design and my art to the next level,” she said.
More of West’s work can be found on her Instagram account, kellywestart.