Rain Longson Artist

Hello, Rain here.

I would like to tell you a bit about myself. I had a four footed sibling as a baby a German Shepard puppy. I think this is when my love of dog and pets in general started. It was a few years before I discovered art, my second love. The first art instruction I actually remember, from dim, dark memory, told not to eat my crayons. That just had to be wrong; anything with such pretty colors had to taste good too. Well, that was my reasoning at the time.

In high school, I had definite plans on becoming a vet. or astronaut (you can see here my interest in science fiction and fact). In those days I was told, “No, girls cannot be vets.” I was lost. Plans dashed, I actually contemplated quitting school. That is until I met an incredible woman, Mrs. Sandra Tobe, the art teacher at Hollywood Hills High School in Florida.

Mrs. Tobe turned me around and reintroduced me to art. From then on, I never looked back; I had found true love and a vocation. As a teenager, I illustrated college student’s assignments, taught art at the local community centers and I loved every minute of it. During high school, my art was in several shows and galleries. On graduating from high school, I received two scholarships, one to Parson’s School of Design in New York City the other to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.

At Parson’s I took fine arts and sculpture. At the Art Institute, I took Commercial Art (now called Communication or Graphic Design) and illustration. I spent the ensuing years as a fashion designer for Sassoon in Florida, and window dresser/retail interiors in N.Y.C. Combining my art in the retail arena with prop and mannequin building and repair and faux finishing work.

In 1991, I moved back to Canada. Specifically, I moved to Vancouver, BC and continued my career in the retail industry. However, I was realizing that ‘window dressing’ was becoming history and I was facing a dead end. Hence I went back to school to learn computing, both Mac and PC’s. I was fortunate to receive a Government of Canada grant that covered cost of living while I took a full year of schooling at the Vancouver Film School. I studied New Media, which covered computerized graphics, illustration, animation videography and audio (again zero interest is a subject matter).

Since graduating from VFS, I have done a stint of a couple of years as a graphic designer/illustrator, working for such companies as Telus and their clients. I have done children’s book illustrations and I have worked as a freelancer/contractor.

Now I have come back full circle and I am back into painting acrylic on canvas primarily and am doing some watercolour. I was delighted to discover these past couple of years that I have a knack for pet portraiture. With my style being ‘contemporary realism’, some folks have thought that my art was a photograph until a close examination shows the brush strokes. I even use a magnifying glass to work on the mouth and eyes of all my subjects and some noses.

Now I get to combine my love for animals and nature with my love for painting.

Not long, after arriving to BC I met and a couple years later married the most wonderful man in the world. John and I are busily involved in living happily ever after with our three furkids, Maggie, a Bernese Mountain dog and Shadow and Halo out Sphynx cats.