We were lucky to catch up with Christa Rosenkranz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I have recently started painting pet portraits. I have a degree in illustration but realized quickly out of school that I didn’t love freelancing for other people’s projects, and changed careers into massage therapy which was rewarding but did take me away from my art for years. I am an animal lover though and have always had multiple pets- currently 2 cats, a dog and a horse. My horse developed a COPD a couple summers ago though and then my dog, who is older but still spunky, suddenly had a tumor on his head and tried to go into heart failure, resulting in piles of vet bills. I needed to make more money and started advertising pet portraits to help pay for them, and it quickly blossomed into complete side hustle. My animals have very much been my emotional support system since a really difficult divorce a few years ago, and so its been really nice to find my voice as an artist again, in a way that helps me take care of the pets that I love- while also commemorating the pets in my paintings who are dearly loved by their owners. There is just a lot of love all around in this venture and it makes me very happy. And its been a way to turn a hard situation with my pets health into something good by using my talents again, which has felt like a gift in the midst of a hard situation. And the good news is that my pets are all doing well now after a lot of helpful vet visits!

Christa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been doing art for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is trying to get my parents to help me build a pony out of snow. I was always scribbling cats and mermaids with markers as a kid. I was always getting in trouble for drawing in class growing up. As a teenager it turned into a way for me to express my feelings and I ended up attending SCAD in Savannah, completing my degree in Illustration.

Once I was out of school, I realized I didn’t like to do art for other people and making a living off of it really took the joy out of it for me so I changed careers into massage therapy. I love the work that I do. I specialize in helping people with chronic pain which is a really rewarding way to spend my time.

The watercolor pet portrait business started last year and I feel like I have finally found my niche as an artist. Growing up and in college, I usually used acrylic paints, and I was meticulous about details and would spend hours and hours getting things right. I had a hard time with water colors in the past because you have to lay them down decisively and let the paint do what it wants to do, without micromanaging it or you tend to mess it up. A few years ago I went through a pretty devastating divorce and I have been joking that doing a lot of therapy has helped me learn to let go of control which has improved my water color painting! It has been funny because I picked it up one day and it came naturally to me in a way that it didn’t when I was younger. I think a lot of trained artists also struggle with having been told how to work by so many teachers and employers over the years and I finally think I was out of school long enough to come back to my work with a fresh start and it has felt very freeing.

My pet portraits are for anyone who loves their animals. My art is just simply about capturing the essence of the animals we all care for so much. They bring so much joy to our lives and that is always worth commemorating. It makes me really happy to see how much people love their pets when they share their photos and stories about how sweet and funny they are, which makes the paintings so fun to work on.

The best part of all of this is that I am entirely self employed and I am really proud of myself for being able to provide for myself and my pets. I was convinced when I was younger that I was going to be a starving artist but it turns out that it does put food on the table, and in the pet’s bowls!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

In college, if you’d told me that I would eventually be a pet portrait artist, I would have probably been disappointed. It had been impressed upon me that I should do something big and grand with my life, and I’ll admit that I liked to fall into the category of being a tortured artist with lots of feelings about everything. Last year I was talking to a friend of mine who also attended art school about this and she said that in college, she felt like if her art wasn’t revolutionary, it wasn’t worth anything. This really hit me hard when I though about it, because that same feeling kept me from doing art out of frustration and a fear of failure.

Back then, pet portraits seemed trivial, but now I realize that capturing something that is oh so loved, even if it is ordinary, even if it is just a scruffy little dog or a cross eyed cat, brings so much joy and happiness to the right person. When we can appreciate the little everyday things in our lives- whether it is our pets, our family, our friends, the spaces we reside in- and make them beautiful or fun, it creates a bunch of smiles and sunshine. And I really feel that in my heart these days. Art doesn’t have to be revolutionary to be meaningful.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There is a book called the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Its basically a rehab for artists who are having a hard time getting any work done. I highly recommend it to anyone with an artist’s block.

And the other thing is simply giving yourself time to find yourself as an artist. Some years I have produced tons of art. Other years, I have hardly picked up a pencil and paper. Creativity ebbs and flows. I’ve learned not to force it and when it wants to come out, it does.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.christarosenkranz.com/pets
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christarosenkranzart/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF6WqntT-KmD7KXaXvQdFTA
• Other: This is my massage business- https://www.formandfreedom.com/

Image Credits

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