by Jennie Lloyd | Photos by Kara Hamilton
The life path of artist, educator, and advocate Matt Moffett changed after
one of his first dogs died traumatically. He wanted something to remember his dog by — a painting to commemorate his life after a tragic death. But to his chagrin, Moffett could find no one to help him with this quest.
At the time, in the late 1990s, there weren’t many artists working in the Tulsa area at all, he says, and almost none who took commissions for paintings of dogs. “I went to everybody asking if they knew somebody who paints dogs,” he says.
“There were a few.” But most couldn’t do the work postmortem or required lots of good photographs — which Moffett didn’t have.
He searched Oklahoma City and Kansas City for an artist who could paint his dog and help him honor his life.
“I finally went down to Dallas,” Moffett says, “and I found out about this woman who painted dog portraits. I was excited, I went to her studio, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I paint dogs. That’ll be $14,000.’ ”
He says, “I was so heartbroken. While I was driving back home, I thought, ‘I’m gonna do this myself.’ So when I got back here to Tulsa, I went straight to Ziegler’s.”
Moffett asked the staff at the art and frame shop how to use oil paints and which canvases to buy. When he began his endeavor, he was in his mid-twenties, working as an adjunct professor at the University of Tulsa.
“My generation was taught you can’t make a living on art. I thought I’d be responsible and get a job as a teacher,” he says.
But Moffett had to paint this dog. And when he did, he revealed in himself an incredible natural talent and passion for painting. Since then, he has become well known for his vibrant, whimsical style and as much for his lively animal portraits as his playful renditions of Tulsa landmarks. He believes in creating gorgeous, affordable, approachable art.
Before he took on painting full time, Moffett taught Spanish and then art classes. Next he cofounded the Tulsa Girls Art School, which he ran for a decade. Now, more than two decades later, “Here we are,”
Matt Moffett and Prudence share a life of art and whimsy.
10 TulsaPets • November / December 2023
Moffett laughs, in his colorful, artistic home, surrounded by paintings that are alive with color and levity. His way of remembering his dogs — and all the dogs he paints — is through art. His paintings balance funny with loving and whimsical with respectful.
Prudence Enlivens the Day
Right now, Moffett has one dog, an elderly Boston Terrier named Prudence — Prudie for short. She loves to race around the house chasing a ball and snorting her gleeful grunts, the unique language of the brachycephalic canine (a term that comes
to us from the Greek words for “short” and “head”).
Snorts are “how they communicate,” Moffett explains. “If I snort, she will get superexcited — it’s the song of their people. My favorite is the last snort of the day, when she takes a deep breath and settles in” for deep sleep under her blanket. “What a wonderful sound! Pure contentment,” he says.
Moffett got Prudie in the late 2000s.
“The smashed nose and the little wrinkle above the nose just drive me insane,” he laughs — insane in the best way.
He had found an ad for a Boston Terrier online and shot the person an e-mail, hoping for the best. The woman wrote back to say she had posted the ad several years before, and that pup had long since been adopted. But, she said, her neighbor in Chouteau still had the mother. And she had recently given birth to a single pup. “So I arranged to go see her,” Moffett says. As he arrived in Chouteau, the owners were preparing to dock the pup’s tail. He stopped a man with the scissors in his hands, and asked that her “God-given tail” be kept skinny and short — and intact. Prudence was six weeks old when he brought her home, wagging her natural tail.
Prudence became one of Moffett’s artistic muses immediately. The Boston is spry and healthy, a tiny, compact ball of energy. She is “one solid muscle,” Moffett says. She snores like a hippo at night and loves to sleep under blankets just like her Dachshund friends taught her years ago.
Moffett and Prudie begin their day at 6:30 a.m. when “she gets me up bright and shiny,” he laughs. “She demands food and to go outside, so we do that. And then I get up and have my coffee, and we sit on the front porch after she eats.”
Then as Moffett is getting ready for the
day, “Prudence and I dance every morning when I get out of the shower. She loves to come marching in while I’m brushing my teeth and combing my hair, and we have a little dance party in the bathroom.”
Then Moffett goes to work at his studio, not far from his home. “I go there and paint and come home at noon and have lunch with her while she eats,” he says.
“Then we take a little catnap” before Moffett heads back to paint in the afternoons.
“She is the best co-napper I’ve ever had,” he says.
Although Prudence is the subject of many of Moffett’s paintings, she doesn’t accompany him to his studio. She is sensitive to loud noises and change, and at the moment, Moffett’s studio is being renovated. The construction is too much for her. So while Moffett paints during the day, Prudie holds down the fort at home. In the evenings, they take walks around TU or watch movies together on the couch.
Dogs Inspire Whimsical Art
Before Prudie, Moffett owned Dachshunds and Labradors. In his art, you’ll find all his beloved dogs — his muses. In his home, you’ll find a two-story wall jam-packed with ornately framed portraits of Moffett’s beloved pups, featured in fun settings and colors that leap from their frames. If you look closely, you’ll find a painting of Prudence as Aphrodite, poised on a clam shell looking serene.
Other artistic renderings of Prudie include one of her dressed as Sherlock
Holmes, solving a case. There’s a sketch of Prudie with a little Tulsa flag bandanna on her head. Moffett painted a playing card of her as the Queen of Diamonds, replete with turban and Chanel tweed jacket, as regal as the Queen Mother herself. There’s yet another painting of the feisty Boston as Vicki, the dad’s girlfriend from the original Parent Trap movie, complete with bristle rollers in her hair, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, and a mug of morning coffee.
Where does Moffett find all his ideas? Well, he has this theory.
“I think that all dogs have a secret life,” he says. “When we’re not home, they’re doing things. So you know, Prudie might get her cell phone out and have a little party.”
This magically mischievous approach to pet portraiture — and to life — sets Moffett’s art and work apart in exciting ways.
Although Moffett has remained loyal to Tulsa despite his success, he travels to create art through residencies. This fall, he painted in southern Spain, where he completed a five-week residency in a 300-yearold pomegranate orchard. It was his eighth residency.
He is excited about the residencies, but
“it’s so hard to leave” Prudie, he says. But don’t fret — she is attended to by close family friends in her home.
While Moffett is away, what kinds of secret, wild fun will Prudie indulge in?
She’ll never tell.
Check out Moffett’s art at his website, https://www.m2studio918.com, or his Instagram, @m2art.
