Zann Hemphill

Exhibiting Member

Preferred Medium:

Oil and Acrylic

Artist Bio:

Zann is best known for her photorealistic oil portraits of dogs, cats, and other animals. But she also works in acrylic, painting colourful abstracts on paper and canvas.

Oil paints have allowed Zann to work wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry to capture a beautiful variety of textures. In her portraits, she uses oils to slowly build an animal's likeness from the ground up. The translucence of oil paints brings depth and life into the final portraits, so you can almost believe they're looking out at you.

Acrylics have provided a creative outlet separate from Zann's portraiture business. Experimentation and play with acrylics keep her art practice fresh.

Zann's work can be found online at PawsByZann.com, and she hosts tutorials on Community Television through Rogers, as well as on YouTube.

Artist Statement:

People buy portraits to honour important relationships. Maybe the relationship is with the portrait subject directly, or maybe with the spouse or sibling or friend they’re getting the portrait for. Our culture is not great at honour. But still, we search for others who can lend their hearts to the cause. Art becomes a vehicle for love and respct, a way to share meaning. It’s something people can gather around.

So iInstead of trying to be efficient in delivering images to people, I’ve done totally the opposite. I picked a very difficult medium to master – oil paints – and now go through a high-touch, high-committment process to create my art. I have to look very carefully at my subjects, and I’ve learned to see things that others miss.

When people commission a portrait from me, they’re paying for me to apply skills that are difficult to obtain in service to someone they love. Their animals, or the recipient of a gift. Clients are showing me something very special from their lives, and saying “pay attention with me”. Good art is the token, the offering, that shows proper attention has been paid.