Recently we traveled all the way to sunny Florida to visit with our Purrfect Days artist Drew Strouble. Drew is a prolific and passionate artist - in fact, Drew's collection of cat watercolour portraits is the largest in the world by a single artist!
Drew loved cats from an early age, and as a result planned to be a veterinarian. Though he had begun drawing at quite young, it wasn't until his senior year in high school that a teacher noticed his raw talent and encouraged him to study the fine arts. As a result, Drew headed to the Ringling School of Art & Design. After working professionally for a few years Drew and his wife Kim took a trip to Key West, Florida where she snapped a photo of a cat resting. Drew created a painting from this photograph and named it "Helga's Cat". Helga's Cat was enormously popular and led to Drew's career focus on cats - it provided the inspiration to paint a cat series.
Pictured above is the artist with one of his three cats, Lola. Lola, at this time has not yet appeared on our Purrfect Days calendar. Rusty, another of Drew's cats is our model for the month of December, 2011.
Drew has won many top awards and honors in painting and watercolor. He has received a total of five highly coveted Muse Medallions from the Cat Writer's Association, and is a generous patron to cat charities. His very own CatmanDrew Art for the Animals Foundation supports various animal shelters, charities and rescue programs that are too small to register on the radar of larger philanthropic organizations.