PORT ANGELES — Life is one crazy adventure, Allyn Cowan finds. It’s filled with comedy, drama, dogs and cats.
A nomad who has landed on the Olympic Peninsula, Cowan likes to illustrate this. And though she was trained as a theater director at the Boston Conservatory, she relishes the pursuit of an altogether different art form.
She is a portraitist, specializing in animals. Sure, there was a time when she painted people alongside their pets.
But “Oh, look at the dog!” is the exclamation she kept hearing, over and over.
“I’ve got to get rid of these people,” she joked, “and just paint the dogs.”
But Cowan has a way of giving canines and felines particular personas — wistful, insouciant, pensive — while keeping their furry charms in the picture. She does this on mock magazine covers — The New Yorkie, AARF, Rolling Bone, Spots Illustrated — and book covers such as slightly less than Fifty Shades of Greyhound.
Cowan, 63, has displayed her art in both Clallam and Jefferson counties since arriving here some three years ago; earlier this year she became a member of Gallery Nine, the cooperative in downtown Port Townsend.
Those who see Cowan’s creations tend to fall into two groups, said Mitch Poling, another Gallery Nine artist.
The first group laughs at the magazine-cover parodies, he said, while group two is “entranced by the art. They don’t pay attention to the humor as much as they’re relating emotionally.
“One group reacts with their heads, while the other group reacts with their hearts.”
Either way, “they’re magnetically attracted” to that dog or cat.
Cowan started out making art while living in New England during the 1980s. Then she moved to Montgomery, Ala., the city where her husband, Myles, lived when they met via an Internet chat room. She was willing to “do time” there, as she put it, but as soon as Myles’ children graduated high school, the couple lit out for the West.
In 2004, they hit California and drove north, all the way to Port Angeles.
They fell in love with the place. But due to a variety of factors, the Cowans moved to Longview. They had friends there — but no jobs.
Myles, an accountant, did find work in McMinnville, Ore., while Cowan found an audience at the Astoria Sunday Market.
“Every Sunday, we’d get up at 4 and drive there.
“Myles built me the most extraordinary portable store,” with pegboard walls and a design that enabled her to set up quick and pack up fast.
Cowan began meeting a variety of people — and dogs — at the market; she marveled at the hulking bear of a man who carried a Chihuahua in his coat pocket. The dog wore a sweater — in fact a sock that had little holes cut out for its legs.
She took photos of the Sunday Market dogs and then painted them, much to the astonishment of the owners.
“I developed a reputation as the dog painter,” she recalled.
Cowan got used to people gushing over her art — and she got commissions.
“People came by to see what was new,” she remembered, “and to tell me about their dogs.”
At that time, though, Cowan’s pet was a cat, Subaru. The feline inspired her to create a comic-book cover bearing Space Cat, a Superman-like hero. This character was to be the first of many cover-cats and -dogs.
When asked how she learned to paint, Cowan said she’s mainly self-taught. She’s tried studying with a professional artist. And she’s heard advice from other painters who saw her work and declared it inadequate.
“I loved cartooning,” she said. “I taught myself to do watercolors, from books.”
Since then, she has switched to acrylics and kept her fiercely independent bent.
One art teacher said, in essence, “You have to do it this way because this is what I do.”
Another artist “blew up at me. ‘You don’t even have an underpainting,’ she said. I’m wondering, ‘What’s an underpainting?’”
Cowan’s fans and fellow artists don’t seem to mind the lack of an underpainting.
“The humor: I love it,” said Poling, one of Gallery Nine’s founders.
“I really like the way she uses color,” he said, adding that Cowan’s magazine covers provoke laughter, thought and memory.
There’s one AARF cover, a parody of the AARP magazine, bearing a dog with a World War II bomber hat on his head.
“The dog has this look on his face,” said Poling. “He’s remembering the old days.”
Printed beside this face are the lines: “Obsolescence is old hat. Keep things under your hat. Now where did I put my hat?”
Then there’s Mewsweek, the cover graced with a kitten.
“Pawlitics: Too pussy-llanimous?” reads the headline, playing on the word pusillanimous, meaning cowardly.
“In the troubled times we live in today,” added Gallery Nine artist Chuck Stern, “Allyn puts a ray of sunshine on an otherwise dark day.
“People can’t help but smile when they see her paintings. We could use more humor in this world.”
The Cowans finally moved to Port Angeles after Myles was hired as Interfor’s controller for Washington operations. His wife had to stay behind in Oregon, though, to sell their place there.
“I was in McMinnville, languishing, and he was up here, languishing,” she recalled. “We adore each other,” after 17 years of marriage.
Finally, Cowan was able to join Myles here and go looking for a house they could make into their home.
Cowan had seen and admired the unusual structure on Whidby Street.
Then it appeared on the market and, despite its quirks, the couple bought and began remodeling it.
The house is perched on its strip of land in such a way, Cowan said, that it has views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from many angles. Look out any window, she added, and you see a pleasing view.
Just as the Cowans were delighted to move into the neighborhood, passers-by got curious. Karen Long, co-owner of the Oven Spoonful cafe in downtown Port Angeles, was one of the people who caught sight of Cowan’s artwork — and wanted to see more.
That’s how the painter had one of her first shows here: Long invited her to be the December 2012 featured artist at Oven Spoonful. Magazine covers such as Spots Illustrated, with a crooked-fanged Dalmatian, were among the works gazing out at cafe patrons.
Cowan also met Port Angeles artists Cathy and David Haight, who invited her to Gallery Nine. The cooperative welcomed Cowan and her paintings, and she quickly learned that this is one of the most popular venues in gallery-rich Port Townsend.
Soon after, Cowan was diagnosed with breast cancer. After being told she would be sick for six months or more, she called Gallery Nine to withdraw.
In addition to displaying art, each member is expected to work three shifts per month at the venue, and Cowan didn’t know if she’d be up to it.
But the other members took a vote. Cowan got a phone call: “We’d like to keep you. Come when you can,” she was told.
“I couldn’t believe how generous that was,” said the artist.
Cowan has finished her treatments. She’s back to painting, dreaming up new magazine and book covers like Tequila Mockingbird and Vanity Fur.
“I was lucky,” Cowan said.
She is also defiant.
“My life is not going to be about cancer,” nor will she accept the label “cancer survivor.” Cowan has survived a lot of things, after all.
These days, life in Port Angeles is sweet. Cowan has lived in 30 communities, from Vermont and Massachusetts to Birmingham and Longview, and finds this one to be the most welcoming of all.
When given a chance, she said, even the rough-looking teenagers are nice.
“Sometimes you learn a lot by overlooking the hardware and the tattoos. You find this genuine, interesting human being,” she said.
“People call Port Angeles a blue-collar town. But, hello, the Esprit festival is held here,” Cowan added, referring to the conference that’s brought transgendered people from across the Northwest to town every spring since 1990.
She and Myles share their home with Douglas E. Bowser, whom Cowan calls “a Jack Russell terrier trapped in a German shepherd’s body.”
Doug E. has become a beloved family member, hopelessly devoted to his people.
The one thing wrong with dogs, Cowan said, is that they don’t live forever.
In a sense, though, they do.
“I don’t ever get tired,” the artist said, “of painting dogs and cats.”
