Boldly Go - Pet Set - PRINTs in white frames

This is for a set of three framed prints!

Framed Prints of : "My Cat and I" and "Alfa-177 Canine"

"My Cat and I"

Felis catus, is your taxonomic nomenclature... shall I continue? If you've found this art you probably know the rest of an Ode to Spot! I chose to memorialize the relationship between the characters Data and his cat Spot in this Victorian era portrait style. I painted these miniature portraits on top of vintage prints which fit perfectly in their vintage frames. The original of these paintings are now in my personal collection, as I'm rather fond of them.

Prints of Victorian era portraits were very common. Looking at history, it's interesting to remember that without cameras, drawings and painted portraits were the only way of capturing one's image. It was common to have portraits painted of family members to document their life. Painted portraits were quite expensive... which would have influenced the trend of miniature portraits, which were more affordable due to their size and materials. (Although, I'll testify as an artist that while smaller means less paint, it doesn't mean less time... and it is extremely difficult to paint tiny!) 

So with that in mind, I enjoyed creating these portraits of Data & Spot in this older portrait style. As an android incapable of human emotion, Data's past times all revolved around activities that are uniquely human to help him better understand and perhaps become more human... including painting and owning a pet cat! Even though Data did not feel emotions, he had a familiarity of the pathways to his brain regarding Spot that were clearly indicative of care and love.

Data's exploration of painting was also fascinating to watch... he explored the art of painting to unlock his own creativity, another human concept that logically was out of Data's reach. In one episode, he was obsessively painting his first ever dream... even painting with both hands two paintings at once! 

In painting these portraits, I liked imagining that Data himself painted these portraits... perhaps he broke the prime directive and was stuck in time in the Victorian Era. And to pass the time, painted a pair of miniature portraits... one of himself, and one of his true and valued friend, Spot. 

“Alfa-177 Canine”

For this alteration, I imagined I was painting a portrait for a proud dog owner from the planet Alfa-177! The extreme weather conditions of that planet resulted in strange mutations of the animals who lived there. So it’s much like an earth dog, but with a horn, antennae, scaled backbone, and hairless tail!

If you haven’t heard of an Alfa-177 canine before, it made its debut on “The Enemy Within,” one of my favourite episodes of TOS. It was a fun story based on the idea that the transporter was malfunctioning and beaming up two versions of the same being… you guessed it, one good and one evil! Made for some dramatic acting from Captain Kirk! And the dog dressed in this costume with the massive horn and antennae was just wonderfully hilarious… he looked totally not impressed!

The vintage painting I used for this artwork was in rough shape when it came to me… I’m sure someone loved their pekingese very much to have his portrait painted years ago, but it looked a bit scary with it’s glazed over eyes! The painting itself was covered with grime, and so I cleaned it and was able to get the blue skies and grey stone colours back. Then I had some fun transforming this blind purebred into a sweet natured space dog.