about ursula

short story:

Welcome and thank you for finding your way to this page.  I’ve been a working artist for 25 years.  For 50-ish years I’ve been single-mindedly attracted to the same things:  place-making (meaning architecture and environment), mark-making (meaning art), mess-making (meaning life) and animals.  I live with horses, a dog, a cat and a husband (not in order of importance, although most horse people would challenge that).  A brilliant and obscure bit of divine intervention has led me to focus my attention on the pet/animal aspect of my work after having previously been only a dabbler. I paint in oils on paper, canvas and wood [and the occasional fire hydrant…don’t ask ], and then scan the artwork (except for the fire hydrant) and finish it on the computer.  I adore what I do; this current work is personal and meaningful to me and it brings me great joy when it connects me to someone who finds it personal and meaningful in their own way.

novel:

I drew compulsively throughout childhood but I began getting paid for it while earning my BFA at the University of Washington by working part time for a porcelain jewelry factory, where I designed a best-selling line of earrings and pins. This whet my appetite to launch my own company in 1989, so with $1000 and a small kiln I started making hand painted ceramic tile. I took an armload of them (20 to be exact) and a card table to the fledgling first season of the now legendary Fremont Sunday Market in Seattle. Within 8 weeks I was selling about 300 tiles per weekend and by the end of the first year I was wholesaling tiles to gourmet shops and high end craft and gift galleries all over the country. It was a crazy time. I don’t remember sleeping for about a decade.

The tiles led me to my first licensing job. Licensing is when a company uses my artwork on their product. My artwork has appeared on greeting cards and stationery, ceramic coffee cups, pet food bowls, salt & pepper shakers, spoon rests, teapots, serveware, placemats, rugs, garden flags, mailbox magnets, napkins and paper plates, to name just a few.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss licensing projects.

My work has now come full circle and I am back to selling work directly to retailers and customers.  I love being in touch again with the people who buy my work; I love the exchange of ideas and I’m inspired by the connection.  I love the design flexibility and freedom that working out of my studio allows me; I love being able to endlessly tweak colors, change fonts or experiment with new papers.  The enthusiasm, vision and independence of all the small business owners and committed pet owners I get to encounter with this newest iteration of my studio is extremely refreshing and vital.