Denmark\u2019s Queen Margrethe II might have a lot of the world on a string, but bring up the subject of doggie karma, and that string morphs into a giant ball of grimy, dismembered twine. In 1993, Her Highness\u2019 best friend Zenobie ran away during a stroll in the woods north of Copenhagen (searches by thousands of volunteers failed to turn up a trace). Celimene, Zenobie\u2019s replacement, died 12 years later on the heels of a lingering illness. And in 2006, 2-year-old Helike was rushed to an animal hospital after being hit by a car. All three animals were dachshunds, which may illustrate Margrethe\u2019s genuine love for the breed (i.e., her affection for dogs is motivated by the animal, not by public opinion, and that\u2019s cool). All three animals were central figures in trillions of press photos\u2013the monarchy is wildly popular in Denmark, and anything in its connection is the target of a certain overkill. But there\u2019s no record of all three animals, or even one, as the subject of a painted portrait. And that\u2019s a shame. Tributes like that are defined as acts of love by the labor- intensiveness alone. Just ask somebody who creates them. Deirdre O\u2019Byrne\u2013the same oil painter and watercolorist who\u2019s made such a splash with her urban and rural landscapes, seascapes and, yes, human beings\u2013would have made an exceptional pet portrait artist to the queen\u2019s Court. It\u2019s not enough, the native Dubliner said, to simply clone eyes, noses and jaws. She\u2019s after expression and temperament, just as she seeks to capture the mood in her other work by being in the moment with her locale. Nothing escapes her scrutiny, down to the natural color of the coat. Purplish snouts and orangish manes often underscore dew-eyed expressions of chagrin, as if to remind the animal there\u2019s more to life than food and slippers. “Because I love color,” the Mission Valley resident explains, “I started introducing a lot of color into the paintings, like exaggerating, just pushing color. People say \u2018how do you pick the colors.\u2019 It\u2019s more my feeling toward the photograph or the pet itself. I just go with what I\u2019m feeling, and that\u2019s how I come up with the color scheme.” The universal canine countenance makes those feelings come easy. “They look sad,” she says. “That\u2019s the thing with dogs. When they have their normal face, they do look a little sad. You have to try and get their tongues sticking out to make \u2019em smile.” It\u2019s one thing to manufacture that smile, which the 48-year-old O\u2019Byrne has been doing since she was probably 19. It\u2019s another, she said, to encourage its natural evolution in a healthy pet. The best portraits, after all, are the byproducts of the best exercise regimens. “I had a neighbor,” O\u2019Byrne explains, “who had a great Dane\u2013two great Danes\u2013in an apartment. I was, like, \u2018I seriously hope she\u2019s lookin\u2019 after those dogs.\u2019 But she was really good. She walked them every single morning and every lunch and every evening. I felt better knowing she was looking after them. If you\u2019re the kind of pet owner who takes them out, like, once a week, you shouldn\u2019t even have a pet. Twice a day, minimum, is when a dog should be taken out.” Lore has it that Margrethe\u2019s dogs were exercised faithfully\u2013an outdoor stroll, in fact, led to Zenobie\u2019s disappearance. That\u2019s the last we\u2019ll see of the royal little tyke\u2013not so, O\u2019Byrne said, for many pet owners who choose to capture their pets\u2019 visages for posterity. Dogs, cats, birds, horses, rabbits, snakes, lizards, even ant farms: Pet portraiture is big biz these days. New York\u2019s Doyle Dogs in Art auction cites a record $590,000 paid for a single work in 2005 (it was expected to go for less that a tenth of that figure). A hilarious doggie courtroom scene painting was expected to fetch up to $50,000 at this year\u2019s event. A 2008 Massachusetts art sale, featuring several portraits of wildlife and sporting animals in action, netted $3.2 million, with transactions held on more than 550 lots. And the retail pet business itself isn\u2019t exactly slouching. Food, toys, clothes, even health insurance and burial plots: The National Retail Federation estimates that the industry will rake in some $20 billion during 2009, the recession notwithstanding. “I think animals are the new generation of babies,” O\u2019Byrne says. “A lot of people aren\u2019t having kids nowadays, and they have pets. They\u2019re just as important as another person. I just think that a portrait of your pet is something you have forever. Sadly, all our pets don\u2019t live forever, and a few of my clients have asked me to paint their pets who\u2019ve just passed away.” O\u2019Byrne says she recently received an e-mail from a gentleman whose terrier was the central figure in one of her portraits. “It just gives him a lot of peace of mind when he looks at the painting. It just really brings him a lot of comfort. That really means a lot to me.” And forget the record sales and bids. For cat owner O\u2019Byrne, the dollar mentality pales against her genuine respect for the portrait\u2019s subject. “Dogs are just so fun to look at,” she explains. “They make you laugh when you look at them. All your problems go away when you have a dog or a cat around. Everything melts. I think they\u2019re the most therapeutic things ever, on this whole land. “If I ever saw anybody doing anything wrong to a dog, they\u2019d have to deal with me.” It\u2019s a cinch Queen Margrethe feels the same way. After all, those thousands of volunteers who looked for Zenobie showed up chiefly because Her Highness appealed to their public goodness of nature; to boot, she seems like the kind of person who\u2019d be looking out for your animal\u2019s safety if the shoe were on the other foot. Nonetheless, one seriously major element is missing from the royal palace\u2013a vestige of the dearly departed family member whose predicament brought all those people out in the first place. Your solution, however, may be as near as Mission Valley. \u00adFor more information on O\u2019Byrne\u2019s artwork, visit odoodle.com.<\/b><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Denmark\u2019s Queen Margrethe II might have a lot of the world on a string, but bring up the subject of doggie karma, and that string morphs into a giant ball of grimy, dismembered twine. In 1993, Her Highness\u2019 best friend Zenobie ran away during a stroll in the woods north of Copenhagen (searches by thousands […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":284874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Artist Deirdre O\u2019Byrne places a personal premium on her clients\u2019 well-being","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}