Featured Artist Cindy Berceli

For pastel artist Cindy Berceli, every animal portrait is an opportunity to capture a personality and preserve a cherished connection. Visit her website to view more of her work.

 

 

I picked up my first paintbrush at seventeen, learning oils in a local class that could have been a passing interest. It wasn’t. For years I kept painting between everything else life asked of me—including, for a long stretch, a career as a pediatric nurse. I painted children’s portraits on the side, squeezing studio time into whatever hours I could find.

 

 

The shift to pastel came almost by accident. I mentioned to a friend, half-laughing, half-exasperated, that I kept ruining my oil brushes. I’d get called away by my kids mid-session and come back to find the paint dried stiff in the bristles. She said, simply, “You need to paint in pastels.” I tried them, and I fell in love. There was no cleanup standing between me and the next five minutes I could steal, no brush to mourn. Just pigment and paper and whatever light I was chasing that day. I never looked back.

 

 

Animals have always had a pull on me that I can’t fully explain. It’s something I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. There’s an honesty in them, an unguarded presence, that I find endlessly moving. When I turned my attention toward painting them, everything about pastel suited the subject: the softness it can capture in fur, the way it lets light sit on a coat or catch in an eye.

 

 

I’m drawn again and again to the technical challenge of it. The layering of warm and cool tones in sunlit fur, the texture of a wiry coat versus a silky one, and most of all, those expressive eyes that seem to hold a whole personality in them.

 

 

My work today centers mostly on dogs, though my portfolio has grown to include cats, horses, wildlife, and birds. Many of the portraits I create carry real emotional weight. They are portraits commissioned in memory of a pet who has passed, meant to hold onto a presence that mattered enormously to a family. I don’t take that lightly. I want every portrait to feel less like a likeness and more like a connection, something that makes the owner feel like their animal is looking back at them.

 

 

What began as something I did on the side, between nursing shifts and raising kids, is now my full-time work. I still can’t quite believe it. I love this journey and the collectors I’ve gotten to know over the years.

 

 

I’ve had the chance to teach others what pastel can do, and most of all, the quiet joy of handing someone a portrait of an animal who meant everything to them, and watching them view it for the first time.

 

Cindy Berceli invites you to follow on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

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