As you all know, Melissa and I dream of achieving full crazy cat lady status as we lurch ungraciously into our senior years. And in the (approximate) words of Sir Isaac Newton: If we can see further into the craziness that is cat-dom it is because we stand on the shoulders of those giants who have gone all catnip and scritchy-scratchy before us. One of those giants is Louis Wain (1860-1939), cat artist and crazy cat person extraordinaire.
You can check out the Wikipedia article, but the real gems are the links at its end.
Wain began as a rather ordinary illustrator whose cat pictures became increasingly anthropomorphic
and then transitioned into the positively psychedelic.
Today, I ask you to join me in raising a toast to his memory and to the potential for unbridled cat craziness that lies in each of us.
Thanks for introducing me to this artist. These are wonderful and I will surely look for more of him.
Wow, I’ve seen his work before! Very interesting Wiki article about him…
I was familiar with his Victorian-style cats – but psychedelic??? Who knew? All those years of snorting cat fur eventially got to him, apparently. Fun stuff, tho!
Great post, and how nice to meet another fan of Louis Wain!
I’ve been a huge fan of Louis Wain for about 13 years now. As a cat lover, and a cat artist as well, I find his life story and cat artwork very inspirational.
In reagrds to Jo’s comment, the psychedelic cats that Louis did, were most commonly known as his ‘wallpaper’ or ‘kaleidoscope’ cats. This change in his art was mostly as a result of Louis’ schizophrenia (which he was diagnossed with later in life). The changes in his style of painting and the way his cats looked in his work was also in part to his exposure of his mother’s textile business, in particular, working with a lot of Eastern Indian textiles.
But I belive all Louis Wain’s work, from his very early cat art, to his later cat art, all are wonderful, beautiful, and fascinating in their own right!
If any Wain fans are interested, I posted about him in my own blog, which you can read about here: http://janediamond.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html
Cheers to Louis Wain in his memory and honor indeed! 🙂