PET friends

Female Speaker: Dogs and cats are not only a source of companionship, they can be a source of inspiration. There are many artists who had their imagination captured by animals.

Female Speaker: Vancouver based printmaker Sa Boothroyd finds her artistic inspiration in the world of pets. Her fanciful, imaginative dogs and cats have ended up in homes and galleries across North America and beyond.

Sa Boothroyd: My world is very much filled with dogs, cats and pets. Obviously, you draw what surrounds you, you draw what you know and you draw what you dream about and I think the other thing about drawing pets is that it's a positive world and it's safe and it's fun and there is nothing threatening about dogs or cats or pets, everything comes from my imagination, a small amount of reality mainly my imagination. At affirmative time in my life when I had my first dog, I think she sort of affected my life and also a source of real inspiration.

And I think that my dog life or dog world is sort of a distraction from what goes around us as well, that goes on around us. So I find it sort of a safe place to be. This is a dogodile print that I did when I moved west from Quebec and that dogodiles are heading west because I was heading west. And they're followed by a fish escort and they have eaten cats and chairs, and shoes along their way. Most of my animals eat something usually what turns up in their stomach is something of a slip of the hand or whatever happens to be on my mind at that moment.

This dogodile on the front, I actually did this dogodile when they discovered that a Imelda Marcos had like 5,000 pairs of shoes in her closet. So, this is one of the Imelda Marcos's pairs of shoes. And the chair, I'm not really sure where the chair came. And the other dogodile has eaten a cat, but if you notice most of the cats in the dogs stomach's are happy because everything gets eaten eventually. I'm definitely a dog person because I grow up with dogs. I don't mind cats, but like small babies they cry when they are in my arms. So cats claw me as soon as I try to touch one.

I do, do more cats now just because I have a lot of clients asking for cat pictures and because I'm beginning to understand how a cat is made and how it moves and I have to study that a little bit, whereas I never had to study that with the dog because it was part of my vocabulary. So that's probably one of the reasons, I avoid cats, but I have a few cats at my sleeve now.

When I'm making a lino block, first I begin with a sketch in my sketch book and I take the sketch and reproduce it as a drawing on to a lino block. And then a lino block is simply like a flooring except for a little bit thicker. I work with lino block tools which are very sharp and quite dangerous you have to be careful how you carve. I'll carve up my lino block with a series of different shape tools and once I have got my block, I take it to my print studio where I actually set out ink form to an ink block and role up a roller to take the inks and then I role the roller on to a lino block.

And then I role my, my lino block through an etching press. When I'm doing pulling a lino block for the first, it's like waiting for photographs to come back from the developer, it's kind of exciting. In terms of evolving my art work, I think it will evolve on it's own, you can't -- I can't control that. I see myself as a 75 year old women still painting dogs.

Female Speaker: But she couldn't have a more engaging subject. Good girl Louise, got to go, heel, yeah, sit, sit, good girl. Well, that's our show for this week I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next time. Good girl Louise.