Michael Sowa

Diving Pig

I've loved Michael Sowa's work ever since my first introduction to it almost a decade ago. The Amazon description of his book compares his work to Vermeer and Magritte, which seems about right given the combination of humour and what looks like a painstaking attention to detail (the animal elements, however, do draw my thoughts toward a third artist-Donald Roller Wilson). What draws me in is not only the frequently anthropomorphic quality of his animals, but also the restraint in the way he paints them- which of course makes it even easier to invest them with human qualities- occasionally silly, yes, but also capable of great dignity.
Also, it's fun to play Spot The Resemblance. Like School of Fish, belowTo Golconde, by Magritte(below)

Animal figures, as mentioned before, do tend to populate his work: whether in Sharks of Suburbia (below), Diving Pig/Kohlers Schwein (top picture), or the December 2002 cover of the New Yorker (2nd picture below).

Or, of course, in what are, in pop culture terms, the most famous of his paintings, by virtue of the fact that they decorated the bedroom of Amélie Poulain and talked over her head as she slept at night.

(L-R) Filmhound, Fowl With Pearls