Remembering Loki

Loki was a gorgeous ginger cat with a big personality. ? He loved watching the fish in the fish tank and would spend time there every day, fascinated by everything going on behind the glass.

He also had a rather unexpected love of pineapples! What a cat. 🙂

So when Kim asked me to paint a memorial portrait of Loki, I knew I wanted to include more than simply his likeness. Watching the fish was such a familiar part of his everyday life that it felt right to paint him beside the tank. And, as a little nod to his love of pineapples, I added a tiny ornamental pineapple amongst the decorations inside it. ?

That is one of the things I find so special about painting memorial portraits. Of course, getting the eyes, expression and character right matters enormously, but sometimes it is the smaller details that make a portrait feel truly personal.

A favourite sleeping place, a battered old toy, an unusual habit, the way they sat waiting for dinner, or, in Loki’s case, fish and pineapples.

Those details tell part of their story. They are the things that make us smile and say, “That was so him.”

For me, a memorial portrait is about trying to capture a little of that as well as the animal themselves. Something that brings back not only how they looked, but who they were and the memories that made them so loved.