Lori Anne MacDonald knows firsthand that losing a pet is hard.
In 2016, MacDonald started making small pencil sketches of pets who passed away at the veterinary clinic she worked for. They would be tucked inside sympathy cards for the pets’ owners.
“It's awful to lose an animal," said the self-taught artist. “I just wanted to do something to make our clients feel a little bit better; give them a little memory.”
It was a stressful work environment, seeing people lose pets almost every day. She left the veterinary field for All My Pets, a doggie daycare, and began doing larger sketches for clients there who had lost pets. When the daycare closed in May 2019 and she was out of a job, MacDonald decided that instead of travelling for work she would pursue her artwork full time from home, doing custom pet portraits with coloured pencils.
Her business, Precious Art Works & Prints, offers pet portraits and custom product orders. It is run out of her North River home with porch pickup available.
MacDonald experimented with prints on shadowboxes and memorial stones, but really expanded to customized glassware products such as mugs and wine glasses; fabrics such as clothing pillows and flag blankets; home and garden decor, such as garden flags, and more. Interest is picking up in the Truro area, she said, and some orders have gone to New Glasgow, New Brunswick, and Alberta.
Her favourite part of a portrait is the eyes, which she always sketches first.
“It is so boring to draw a leg or a back," said MacDonald. “The face, the eyes, the nose, the mouth and everything about the face I am fascinated with. I love every minute of it.”
MacDonald would love to open a shop after COVID. The house is getting a bit crowded with products, although her children, aged seven and 10, like to help.
“They seem to have kind of an interest in it,” she said. “But at the same time, they don't like it because I have to try and focus on it sometimes over them. They would rather Momma not be working from home."
MacDonald lost Beaker, her Chihuahua of 15 years, last fall. Outside of commissioned jobs, she is also working on a personal portrait of Beaker.
“I didn't think I'd do a portrait of her just because I didn't think I'd be able to look at her picture and do it,” she said. “But it's helping me through that quite a bit, just watching her day by day ... a little bit more here and a little bit more there. She’s coming back to me.”
