The West County Gazette, April, 2010, page 54
Exerpt from the article -

COLORFUL Show at
Dimensions Galleria, Petaluma

Scene from the Artists Reception

Mylette and Mark Lifvendahl at Dimensions Galleria

The paintings of Sonoma County Artists Mark Lifvendahl and Mylette Welch will Be showcased thru May 30 at Dimensions Galleria as part of the Spring show entitled “Beyond The Garden Wall.”...

...Longtime Sonoma County artist Mylette Welch is best known for her fanciful but individualistic dog portraits. Her humorous and nostalgic paintings depict childhood memories, dreams and everyday encounters. Mylette's paintings are rooted in the Sonoma County landscape...farmers markets, vineyards, vegetable stands, old gas stations and fast food drive-ins. She paints old cars, childern, kitchen scenes and Barbie dolls, but she especially loves painting dogs.

Dimensions Galleria is a joint venture between artist Jerrie Jerne and property owners Will and Jackie Mendoza with Julieanne Anderson, show curator and Marketeer., Dimensions Galleria, 115 Petaluma Blvd North, downtown Petalma. Open Fridays and Saturdays Noon to 8PM and Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays Noon to 6PM

The Press Democrat November 22, 2009
Exerpt from the article -

Creative local gifts for the holidays

By Press Democrat Staff

Value doesn't have to mean cheap. It can mean quality and bang for your buck.

At a time when dollars are more dear, we thought about the season of giving and how o reconcile December's traditional frenzy of spending with the nation's redisovery of thrift.

As you assemble your holiday lists, you may want to consider gifts with added value. We've come up with our favorite gift ideas. Each offers something extra and of lasting value. Things to do, things to eat, things to enjoy and experience, all of which reflect and support our singular Sonoma lifestyle...

Mylette Welch's splashy paintings of dogs and throughly down-home Sonoma County scenes deliver ear-to-ear grins.Other painters may capture the exquisite grace of the North Coast's mountains, meadows and spreading vineyards. But Welch shows its humor and unaffected appeal that we locals so love.

Farmers markets, vegetable stands, old gas stations, fast food drive-ins, junker cars, kids, kitchen scenes. Sonoma comes to whimsical life under her brush. But her favorite subjects are dogs, happy hounds in the vineyards pr by old trucks or nostalgically posed with original 1959 Barbie in her iconic black and white zebra swimsuit. All are in vibrant colors that gleefully shout off the canvas.

Original paintings run from $400 to $6000, but you can get a large matted and signed print for $100 or for only $25, an 8 1/2 -by- 11-inch laser print. Welch's paintings are featured at the Graton Gallery, 9048 Graton Road, but can also be spotted n tasting rooms and cafe exhibits. They can be viewed online at mylettewelch.com or by calling 707-494-0068 or e-mailing mylette@aol.com...

April 2008, GulfCoast DOG Magazine

Excerpts from It's a Dog's World

Her humorous and nostalgic paintings depict childhood memories, dreams and everyday encounters. Mylette's paintings are rooted in the Sonoma County landscape -farmers markets, vineyards, vegetable stands, old gas stations and fast food drive-ins. She paints old cars, children, kitchen scenes and Barbie dolls. But she especially loves color and painting dogs.

“I try to have a good time,” she said. “when people view my work, I hope it makes them smile. There are so many dogs to paint and so little time.”

GulfCoast DOG Magazine page 54 April-May 2008

GulfCoast DOG Magazine page 55 April-May 2008

View the complete full sized article

For more about GulfCoast DOG Magazine visit
http://www.thegulfcoastdog.com/

March 13-19 2008, Living section of the
The Windsor Times, The Healdsburg Tribune, and The Sebastapol Times

Excerpts from
Notes on Painting Man's Best Friend

By Frank Robertson - Staff Writer

I'll bet it would be scary to have to paint a dog. What if it bit you? What if it didn't? Would you have to get to know it? What about the owners?

You'd need a keen sense of temperament and character, I'm sure, to assess both human and animal. What if the owner looks at the finished portrait and falls silent? And then says, 'That's not Maxie.'

Daunting though it sounds to paint a dog, there are a lot of people trying. Artists who work on commission are everywhere. It's a global thing...

Anyone who fancies dogs probably knows by now about Bark Magazine. I'm a subscriber, but even so, there is something about Bark that I instinctively want to resist. It's a shared assumption or an implied set of shared assumptions that has something to do with the products for sale, besides dog portraits; for example, the 'Happy Muzzle,' a device made of 'colorful fabrics and cheery patterns' with which you can force a dog's mouth to stay shut. Offers to sell me customized pet urns and organic grass-fed TV dog dinners add to my ambivalence at what Bark calls 'a growing societal movement ‚ a modern dog culture.'...

The tendency among many pet artists to create portraits that are sentimentalized, saccharine and treacly has to do, I'm sure, with the implied transaction in a commissioned pet portrait. Some artists obviously feeling they have a responsibility to the dog owner (certainly not to the dog) to romanticize the likeness, add the stylized winsome touch that may or may not be there, and about which the dog probably doesn't give a rat's ass.

But when you're talking about people paying to have their dogs immortalized, it's bound to get complicated. Personal emotions - fond remembrance, love, admiration, awe - are all mixed into what we also expect from art, i.e., some candor.

At least that's the hope. You want it to be right, to recognize the essence, the oneness, the singular package of spirit and physique, eyes, ears, nose and attitude.

But it's a painting, not a photograph. The artist's head and hand will be at work. What if it's a caricature? What if you have to decide whether or how you can live with it?

People who want a nice portrait of their dog would probably not go to an artist like Francis Bacon, whose famous 1952 oil on canvas, entitled 'Dog,' portrays a white beast with a muscular snarly presence that looks like a four-legged Dick Cheney. Nevertheless, 'His puking dogs - ' an art historian wrote about a Bacon show last year, 'remain memorable.'...

It may be impossible to say what is a good dog portrait compared with a bad one. Maybe there's a distinction that needs to be made between artists who paint dogs because they want to and those who do commissioned portraits.

Healdsburg artist Mylette Welch does both. You can't really talk about pictures of dogs in Sonoma County without mentioning Mylette Welch. When she paints on commission, said Mylette, there has to be some understanding between artist and dog owner of what the outcome is going to look like, more or less.

'Some people want it to look like the Dutch masters,' said Mylette.'You have to simplify it. That's the key. I show them what I do and tell them, 'That's what I do.'

I don't want to do something that isn't me.'...

spring 2008 edition of Sonoma Pets,
a publication of the Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California

Excerpts from Furry Muses Inspire Sonoma County Artists

By Sue McGuire

The Greeter was a fawn colored, bulgy-eyed, corkscrewed-tailed toaster. Actually it was Toaster, a pug dog.

“When he's not greeting visitors he sits in the studio beneath my easel urging me to work,” says Toaster's human, Healdsburg artist Mylette Welch...

...If their pets are not ordering them to work, several artists in Sonoma County are clearly inspired by their pets to paint, draw and sculpt.

Their pets are often their muses...

...Memorials have become a major source of income for Sonoma County artists who specialize in pet portraits.

“I had one client who never took a picture of his pet. We talked about his dog and from the words came the painting. When he finally saw it he cried,” recalled Welch of one recent commissioned portrait.

Welch's signature pieces often contain surreal scenes of doggy diners, fish swimming outside trucks, a pug dog here and a Labrador in tulips there. The colors are bright, happy and fun.

“I was at a fair once and saw these kids carrying around fish in plastic bags. I anted to paint the fish swimming free,” which is why Welch painted a piece that features fish swimming around a truck in which a Boston terrier sits.

“Maybe people have become more willing to express their love for their pet now. People won't think they're weird,” said Welch...

Time Out section of the Press Democrat,
Santa Rosa, California, for Thursday, October 11, 2007

Excerpts from Art with Attitude

By Dan Taylor - The press Democrat

section of Time Out article

Mylette Welch is a home-grown artist who studied ar SRJC and Sonoma State. She lives with husband, Tom, and two Pugs named Toaster and Knuckles.

If the word museum conjures images of cold marble floors and vaulted ceilings, try imagining an artist's studio, with spatters of paint here and there and a half-finished cup of coffee standing on a workbench. Sounds homey, doesn't it?

Starting this weekend, 138 Sonoma County artists open their studios and home workshops to the public for the 22nd annual ARTrails tour...

...In Healdsburg, painter Mylette Welch, known for her often comic dog portraits, will introduce visitors to two of he live models, personality-packed pugs named Toaster (because he looks like one) and Knuckles.

“And I'm going to make cookies,” Welch adds, “Chocolate Chip.”

Who could resist? All any fun loving art seeker has to do is pick up or download a free map of the participating studios, and start out on a personalized, self-guided tour....

“And I'm going to make cookies,” Welch adds, “Chocolate Chip”

...Amid such imposing practitioners, Welch had carved out her own reputation as an artist with her playful acrylic paintings, ranging in subject from dogs to Popeye cartoon characters, and sometimes combining both. “I was trying to get out of having a day job,” said Welch, 61, “so I worked at a gallery for a while. When I came home at night, I would paint, and pretty much the only one round was the dog. So I would paint either empty rooms or the dog.”

Often commissioned by dog owners to create paintings of their pets, Welch aims for more than accurate portraiture.

“I'm trying to find the inner dog,” she said. “Dogs are all totally different. I have a good time, It's not real serious, but it's serious to me. It's what I do.”

Of course, her models are a little more unpredictable than the human variety found in life drawing classes at art schools.

“This Great Dane puppy came here one time, and he couldn't walk on the hardwood floors,” Welch recalled. “It was like he was on ice. He got freaked out, and bolted right through my screen door.”...

...For the next 2 weekends, ARTrails is a chance to see art in the making and meet the artists, all in a welcoming and, Yes, homey, atmosphere.

Sonoma Woman Vol.2 #3 - May/June, 2007
a Santa Rosa Press Democrat magazine

by Annette Arnold

section of Sonoma Woman article

Mylette Welch is a home-grown artist who studied ar SRJC and Sonoma State. She lives with husband, Tom, and two Pugs named Toaster and Knuckles.

Mylette's humorous and nostalgic paintings depict childhood memories, dreams and everyday encounters rooted in the Sonoma County landscape - farmers' markets, vineyards, vegetable stands, old gas stations and fast food drive-ins. Occasionally her work veers into the surrealistic world of dreams where an accordian or kitchen stove might fly through the night stars. Most of all Mylette loves painting dogs.

When she began painting, Mylette worked at night after her day job. Gus kept her company while her family slept. After painting Gus and her grandma's dog Stubby, she looked for other mutt models at the Healdsburg Animal Shelter. There she found Rolly, Huckleberry and Bee-Bee, the shelter's round mascot. Now, animal lovers seek Mylette to capture their canine portraits in her whimsical and colorful style.

Mylette developed a series of paintings inspired by “what dogs do late at nigh on the loose.” Then another series ofPaintings evolved when she added Barbie solls to the Dogs' mouths. In these paintings Barbie lives in a fantasy world where she dates Gus instead of Ken.

Mylette likes to paint fast wile listening to good music. “I try to have a good time,” she says. “When people view m work I hope it makes them smile.” ...

WEST COUNTY GAZETTE - August 17, 2006

Artist Profile - Mylette Welch

by Barbara Shula

West County Gazette photo - Mylette and her Pugs

Those wonderful Dog Days of Summer are upon us. The roads are packed with residents, tourists and dogs fighting their way to the River to cool their heels and rest their souls. Is there a better time for me to trek to Healdsburg and meet the artist known for her colorful dogs?

Mylette is about as local an artist as you can find in Sonoma County. Yes, she was born in Hawaii but that was just a matter of circumstance. Ger grandparents lived on a Spanish land grant outside of Occidental. Her father was in the Navy when she was a baby but brought his family home to Sebastopol while Mylette was still a toddler. She never strayed from the area. Educated at SRJC and Sonoma State, Mylette focused on art from the beginning. Her favorite part of the school day was Art. It gave her joy and provided an opportunity to branch out socially as her classmates admired her creations.

Motherhood took place of painting when her first two children came along. Mylette found her creative outlet in a gardening, sewing and quilting as they took less concentration and could be done in shorter blocks of time. Mylette worked in various jobs i pottery businesses and art galleries but felt that she was on the periphery of the art world. As her children grew up and another baby joined the family, Mylette found time in the night to paint. She fearlessly jumped into bright, primary colors to contrast the darkness of the night. She painted what was around her - still lifes, empty rooms. One night she decided to add Gus, her lab, to to corner of the painting. Could she have predicted from that one addition what was to come?

Today Mylette is synonymous with dog portraiture. Her beloved Gus is no longer a live subject but he is seen in many of her paintings. She has visited the Animal Shelter to meet new models and receives pictures of family pets from through out the country. She loves doing commissions to immortalize these important companions. In her studio is a large wooden chair (red, I must add) that is covered with chihuahuas. This piece was inspired by an accident in Southern California where over 100 chihuahua dogs, both pure bred and mixed breed, were found abandoned. A fund raiser helped rescue these animals and Mylette was there with her chair.

There is no problem in finding Mylette's work. If one of her paintings is in the room, you cannot miss it. Driving down the street in Healdsburg, I see a bright doggie face pulling me into Arches Gallery. A recently completed show was titled “Dog Tales and Assemble stories” which was a collaboration between Mylette and Monty Monty, the local assemblagist. Mylette participates in many charity events for the community. Mutt Lynch Winery hosts the Dog Days of Summer, a fundraiser for the Healdsburg Animal Shelter each year and Mylette is a featured artist. You missed this one as it was last weekend but there are others. Fritz Winery and Dutcher Crossing Winery are hosting First Annual Art and Wine Trails Event a benefit for the Sonoma County Food Bank on August 26 and 27. This is the Year of the Dog! For the first time the owners of the RASgalleries Art Glass and Ceramics of Yountville, CA, and MJ Schaer Fine Art Gallery of Napa, CA, will combine artists and locations to curate a fabulous show in honor of the Year of the Dog. The show is running right now and and you will find Mylette's paintings as well as art by other local artists. Mylette paticipates in ArTrails, the first and second weekends in October, at her home and studio in Healdsburg. In June, she joins up with a friend in West Santa Rosa for Art @ the Source.

I must let you know that Mylette also paints children, carnivals, trucks, toys and loves to collect sock monkeys. Her new canine companions are Toaster and Knuckles who are pictured with her here. Mylette wants to bring a smile to people's faces and I think that she has accomplished that and more.

Healdsburg Directory and Guide 2006 - 2007

Downtown Healdsburg is a browsers best friend

Full page photo featuring “Robots” by Mylette Welch in front of Arches Gallery.

THE WOOFER TIMES - May, 2006
Excerpted from the article -

Bay Area Painters Depict the Canine Spirit

by Lindsay Weiford

photo excerpted from 2 page spread, featuring on left “Years of the Dogs”, and on the right “A Vineyard Crew”, both by Mylette.

.....“Dogs can teach us a lot about personal relationships, including how to share, how to treat a friend, and how to be a good person”, says Mylette Welch. Mylette depicts humorous and highly personal stories that combine fantasy, memories, and observations of daily life. Her work is colorful, fun, and sometimes surreal in its depiction of the dream lives of dogs.

Paintings that depict dogs don't always get the respect they deserve from the art world. But whether or not the highbrows consider it “fine art,” making art inspired by dogs is a satisfying pursuit for the professionals profiled here.

“Is it lesser art?” says Jeff Leedy. “I don't think my clients care, really. It is art that portrays their families' life and love - and how great is that?”

For more about Woofer Times visit:
www.www.woofertimes.com/

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT - Thursday, November 3, 2005
Excerpted from the article -

D.I.Y. Art Tour

by Dan Taylor

Arches Gallery in Healdsburg - photo by Mark Aronoff

Museum openings draw crowds, and art seekers hit the road every few months for artist studio tours. But why wait for the next big event? Create yor on art tour this weekend. There are so many galleries scattered around Sonoma County that even art buffs can't give an accurate count. So take your pick. .....

Ardent walkers and one stop shoppers can opt for the blitz technique. A quick circuit around Healdsburg's Plaza in the center of town turns up at least a dozen galleries. .....

“Healdsburg has great wines, incredible chefs and now it has a lot of great art,” said Sandy Erickson of Erikson Fine Art Gallery, just a couple a of doors away from Healdsburg's plaza. “I am amazed at how uncrowded we still are, and how succulent the offerings are.”

Once just a patch of grass in a small sleepy town, Healdsburg Plaza has become a busy cultural hub.

“Healdsburg did it right,” said Jody Grovier, manager of the annual ARTrails artist studio tour for the Arts Council of Sonoma County. “They've got a number of galleries and restaurants that have grown up around the plaza. It's art and business working together.”

The result is a tourist attraction that locals can also enjoy all year long, big enough to offer choices yet small enough to cover in an after noon.

“What's great about Healdsburg is the scale of the square and the layout of the own,” said painter Michael Coy, a partner in Arches Gallery, next door to Erikson. “It's pop;ar because of the ascendancy of the wine industry and some good planning work done in combination. It's great to see people from all over having a good time.” .....

Clustered galleries support each other, Grovier said. “Galleries tend to survive and do better when there are other galleries around,” Grovier added.

Standing side by side, places that display good art also challenge each other. “We're competing with exceptional galleries here,” Coy said.

Wether you're wandering around the plaza or all over the country, you'll notice the galleries offer a broad variety of artistic styles.

At Arches, painter and gallery partner Mylette Welch charms visitors with her comic portraits of dogs. .....

Gallery owners urge visitors to simply walk in and learn as they go. Credentials aren't checked at the door. Expertise is not a prerequisite. And admission, except for a few occasional special events, is free. It's up to you whether you want to buy art. .....

Article from the new publication:

FETCH the paper
June, 2005

Art & Advocacy
North Bay artists find dogs and cats a great inspiration,
in art and in life

by Sandy Lurins

Last Chance Texaco by Mylette Welch

Mylette Welch: It's a Dog's World

As a child, Mylette Welch took the paint-by-numbers sets she was given and covered them in white shoe polish so she'd have a blank canvas on which to express herself. That bold attitude continues today in the bright colors and lots of texture in her paintings, which are of dogs (and a few cats) in human situations.

"I try to create a world for the dogs in my paintings...sometimes dreamlike and humorous, sometimes straightforward," Mylette says. Her paintings feature dogs in all sorts of environments: colorful vineyards and gardens, gas stations, diners, and ice cream shops, with antique trucks, and in humorous juxtaposition with fish or sock monkeys (one of Mylette's other favorite subjects). Her style is colorful and the pieces tend to be big.

She called one series "The Psychic's Dog." The paintings were based on Madame Rachel, a local clairvoyant. "I think dogs are really psychic: dogs know exactly what's going on." Her two pugs, Toaster and Baby Knuckles, lay in the exact same spot in her studio that was occupied for many years by Gus, who died at age 14. For Mylette, "it's like having a piece of [Gus] back." Mylette adopted Gus, the big golden Labrador you see in much of her work, from the Healdsburg shelter when he was six weeks old. Gus became ill as an old dog, and Mylette carried him up and down the stairs. When Gus died, people would ask how she could jump right into having more dogs. "How can you not?" she asks. "There's just [a] hole in your heart." In another series, Mylette expressed her fascination of "what dogs do late at night on the loose." Jazz clubs, diners, hot dog stands, Mylette seems to know where the dogs hang out. She has also been taking her work into three dimensions, including some pug papier-mache sculptures.

Lately, her creations have been getting even bigger. This year she is participating in "Cruisin' the Boulevard," a fundraiser for the Petaluma Boys and Girls Club. Her contribution is "Hot Cars, Hot Dogs" featuring a nervous Toaster as passenger with Baby Knuckles at the wheel of a four foot long fiberglass classic car. "Hot Cars, Hot Dogs" and the creations of other artists will be on display in downtown Petaluma from June until August.

Mylette often donates her work to local shelters for their fundraising efforts. She believes that, aside from her direct contributions, "people connect with dogs" through her art. After seeing her work and discussing the need for good adoptive homes, some are often inspired to adopt from a shelter.

Mylette admits that in her art, "I let [dogs] do a lot of my talking." She also believes that dogs are a positive, healing influence on people. "The world is a pretty scary, sad place right now...we need these guys." She brings the pugs to a local nursing home and watches the people there light up. "You live longer if you have a dog: you're happier, healthier." Mylette is a partner in Arches Gallery in Healdsburg, which is currently hosting a show of her work called "The Little Dog Laughed." The show is open until June 28th.

For more about FETCH the paper visit please:
www.fetchthepaper.com.

San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, May 13, 2005
Excerpt from the article -

Petaluma's coops to coupes 'American Graffiti' sets the stage for cruiser art and '50s fun

by Ted Gross, Special to The Chronicle

Section of Chronicle photo by
Paul Chinn
CRUISER ART and '50s FUN -
Healdsburg artist Mylette Welch produced a two-toned black-and-salmon cruiser full of colorful dogs inside and out.

...Healdsburg artist Mylette Welch produced a two-toned black-and-salmon cruiser full of colorful dogs inside and out, with a '50s drive-in restaurant tray sticking out one window.

“I've been painting '50s-style cars and trucks and fast-food places forever,” she said. “I hate the idea these things are going away.”

She remembers cruising Fourth Street with her cousins in the late '50s in Santa Rosa, when the loop stretched from the Flamingo Hotel to Railroad Square. She also recalls watching “American Graffiti” at the old Analy Theater in Sebastopol.

“It was so exciting that the whole thing was so local,” she said. “I brought my dogs, and they lay right outside on the sidewalk until the movie was over.”...

For the complete article please visit San Francico Chronicle's site:
www.SFGate.com.

ArtQueue - October 6 & 7, 2004

Dogs have their day in Mylette Welch's world

by Frank Robertson - Staff Writer

Photo by Frank Robertson
Healdsburg artist Mylette Welch pictured with her dog, Knuckles, at the Arches Gallery in Healdsburg, where she shows her works.

Mylette Welch's paintings stick in your mind like bright quizzical dreams. In her painting titled “Pigs and Pugs,” a surreal juxaposition of pigs and a dog outside a hot-dog shaped diner suggests an ironic spiritual collaboration of animals musing about their own fate. In “Dogtown,” a dachshundesque dog's head pops out of a Doggy Diner and bright orange and sienna -colored canines mingle in an airy blue field with a diner and a big milkbone. Other paintings conjure a doggy amusement park by the sea, recalling San Francisco's old Playland at the Beach where the funny lady, Laughing Sal, was always amused and cackling, and maybe she still is in Mylette Welches art.

Not all Welch's works are paintings of dogs. Bright-faced people, old rusty looking pickup trucks, Pee Wee Herman, and even cats appear in her paintings, but the dogs stand out, figurative renditions loosely rendered almost like caricatures, but not so frought that you'd call them amateurish. And unlike the muted tone reverence through which some painters now view the Sonoma County landscape ( the school I think of as isn't-wine-country-just-so-exquisitely-expensive-looking), Welch's loose and uninhibited canvases are more internalized, offered up like an extended family of mutts viewed by someone who sees them as feverishly bright spirits and wonders what's on their minds.

A brief biography on her website (mylettewelch.com) describes Welch as a “home-grown Sonoma County artist” who studied art at Santa Rosa J. C. and Sonoma State, lives in Healdsburg with her husband, teenage daughter, and two dogs, Toaster and Knuckles.

ArtQue interviewed Mylette, with Knuckles (age 4 months) snoozing on her lap, at Healdsburg's Arches Gallery, where she shows her work.

ArtQue: Your website says you like to paint fast and listen to good music. What kind of music?

Mylette Welch: I especially like Tom Waits. And I listen to the sam ealbum over and over again for the painting session, which is kind of strange, I guess. It kind of keeps you in the same rhythm.

ArtQue: Why do you paint dogs?

Mylette Welch: I find it easy to connect to with a dog, where as a tree or hill does not inspire me to paint. The whimsical situations that I place the dogs in speak a universal language that is familiar and joyful. the relation ship between dogs and humans is one of the oldest and most complex. It's primal. An artist is showing you his world when he paints and mine seems to be filled with dogs.

ArtQue: Who has influenced you?

Mylette Welch: When I started painting dogs after working all day at a day job, the only being awake at night was my dog, Gus, who we lost year before last. He was 14. That's when I pretty much started getting back into painting, after a couple of litters of kids.

ArtQue: How many dogs do you have now?

Mylette Welch: I have 2, Toaster and Knuckles.

ArtQue: What made you decide to get two pugs?

Mylette Welch: When the old guy was sick we had to carry him up and down stairs and I just couldn't do it. He was a big old lab. I decided next time I'm going to have them smaller. I'll probably end up with so many pugs they'll weigh more than a big old lab. Pugs are really cheerful and sweet. They think they're big dogs.

ArtQue: Some of the images in your paintings, the hot-dog shaped diners, roller coasters, remind me of San Francisco's old Playland at the Beach. Were you ever there? Is that what that is?

Mylette Welch: Yeah, a lot of them are Playland at the Beach. When I was a teenager it was the last year it was open. You'd go there in the middle of the night and there was just kind of one bored guy there, and you could go in and go down that slide, do you remember the slide? As a child that was like a super treat to get to go there, from the Sebastopol area.

ArtQue: What artists do you like?

Mylette Welch: I like a lot of artists who don't have anything to do with me, with what I do, like Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Brown, people like that. Something that takes you somewhere else, because that's all we're really doing, we're trying to include people in our world, and they can take it or leave it, but there it is.

ArtQue: Have you painted all your life? Have you always known you'd be an artist?

Mylette Welch: I always Knew.

ArtQue: When you do paintings of dogs on commission, how does that go?

Mylette Welch: People see my work and I just tell them, I can do what I do. I don't want too much direction. It's really hard when people give you all kinds of stuff. Usually it's way too much stuff. You usually have to simplify, simplify, simplify. It's fun. I like to do commissions.

ArtQue: Do you get introduced to the dogs or do you work from photographs?

Mylette Welch: I work from photographs. I put a bunch of photographs around. The painting is not a copy of a photograph. I think of a setting where they might be, where they feel like they live. As far as meeting them, it's always nice to meet another dog. If they are close by I will meet them. But I do a lot of commissions f r people way across the country. Someone will see a painting in the living room at a diner party and all of a sudden I've got a new client.

ArtQue: You've been in Healdsburg a long time?

Mylette Welch: Yes. I was born in Hawaii, and then moved to Bakersfield.

ArtQue: That's an interesting transition.

Mylette Welch: What's really great is my brother is a lifetime surfer. And I get to be the one born in Hawaii and he has to be born in Bakersfield. It's really ironic. We moved to Sebastopol when I was 3. From there through my first year in college I lived in Sebastopol. I've been in this town (Healdsburg) for 31 years.

ArtQue: So you've seen some pretty major changes downtown. In the late 70's it wasn't quite the destination it is now.

Mylette Welch: Oh yeah. Nothing. I doubt if there was an art galley here at all, that I can think of. This bank was still operating when we first came to town. There was a hardware store over there where all the fancy restaurants are. and maybe a couple of rowdy bars. It's quite a different place now.

ArtQue: You participate in ARTrails, which starts this week. What's that like, from an artist's perspective?

Mylette Welch: It's fun. Lots of people, you open your door and you don't know who's going to come in. I've had Brownie troops and group homes come through. I have a lot of the same people each year who just come and eat cookies and sit and talk.

ArtQue: I know some artists who would be terrified of having strangers, or even friends, in their studios.

Mylette Welch: Well, it's just basically my house. in this house, I do have a wonderful studio with air conditioning and hardwood floors. Before, in the old house, my studio was the kitchen. and everyone, my family, actually wanted to eat food sometimes. It was really annoying, it was like, didn't I feed you guys this week? I would have my paints in the kitchen table and that was the dining room table too. But having my own studio, with doors you can shut, I feel really blessed.

ArtQue: No. But I work a lot. I work a lot.

The Press Democrat, 2002

ARTrails Discoveries

When Mylette Welch is alone she turns up the music and dances as she dips her brush into pots of acryrlic paint and layers it on canvas. “Color is one of the most important things in my life,” she said. “Music is imortant, too. It loosens me up. I have so much fun, I don't worry about anything but having a good time.”

Maybe that's why she gravitates to painting dogs and other animals. Often working from photographs sent to her by pet owners, Welch said she “tries to create a world for animals.”

Dogs and their environments have proved important in the literal sense, too. Welch visits shelter dogs and, when she paints them, sometimes they find a home. “It's magical. I took a picture of this dog named Rolly at the shelter here in Healdsburg and, while I was painting him, he was adopted.”

Welch's two dogs, Gus and Calvin, hang around while she paints.

“Gus is my studio guy. He thinks all the visitors are here to see him. He's my party planner, the maitre d'; he's everything.”

Children, old trucks, gas stations and other dreamy images share studio space with her animal paintings. “My paintings are colorful, fun, and children really gravitate to them. Babies love them; their eyes go 'woooh.'” Last year at ARTrails Welch gave prints to a Brownie troup and welcomed teenagers from a group home. She said, “Art is a real connectioin. It's a bridge to people.”

The Press Democrat, Sunday, October 5, 1997

COVER STORY

Artist Mylette Welch, featured on the cover of the Press Democrat's On-Q Magazine

Painter Mylette Welch was born on the sun-drenched island of Oahu. But the tropics didn't really leave an impression on her until her family moved to dry, dusty Bakersfield a year later.

“I remember thinking, 'Where did the color go?'” said the 50-year old artist. For anyone who has seen Welch's paintings, it's obvious that the color went into her playful portraits of stray dogs and old diners and rusty trucks - all splashed across the canvas in vivid hues of red, purple, aqua, and orange.

“Living in Sonoma County is a gift of color,” said Welch, who grew up in Sebastopol and majored in painting at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State. The artist now lives in Healdsburg with her husband, Tom, her beautiful daughter, Lily, and her 7-year-old dog, Gus.

Although Welch recently left the 9 to 5 world to become a full-time artist, she still likes to paint at night - “when the phone doesn't ring, and the kids don't need to be fed.”

Welch's paintings are rooted in the Sonoma County landscape - farmer's markets, vegetable stands, old trucks and tractors, service stations and fast-food drive-ins.

But occasionally her paintings veer off into a surrealistic world of dreams and memories , where goldfish swim around a child's legs or outside a car window.

“I like dreams bumping against reality,” said Welch, comparing this juxtaposition to the moment when you first wake up and your dream is “out there in the room somewhere.”

Her yellow lab/beagle, Gus, has emerged as a major subject in many of her works.

“he's the one that would stay up with me at night,” she explained. “The end of his tail is three colors of paint.”

After painting Gus, Welch looked for other mutt models at the Healdsburg Animal Shelter, where she found such paintable pooches as Rolly, Huckleberry and BeeBee, the shelter's rotund mascot.

Dogged by doggy musings, Welch developed a series of paintings inspired by “what dogs would do at night for fun.” Then, another series of paintings evolved when she added Barbie dolls to the dog's mouths.

“My dog Gus dated her (Barbie) for a while, but since she lost her head, he now prefers his raw hide bone,” said Welch.

Although Welch doesn't take herself too seriously, many art collectors do - one woman in New York recently bought five paintings to add to her Central Park apartment.

“People love my work if they love animals.” Welch noted.

Along with dog portraits, Welch has painted wine labels and posters, ....(she has) exhibited at Rochioli Winery ....(she also has worked) as artist-in-residence at the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma.....

“I like to show in alternative settings, like restaurants and wineries,” she said.

This ....(was) her fourth year with ARTrails, where her acrylic and oil paintings will be available .....

When she paints, Welch said she works fast, producing one to three paintings a week in the spare bedroom she converted into a studio. She likes to listen to old jazz singers like Billie Holiday and Chet Baker, and keeps a small refigerator stocked so she doesn't have to interrupt her work.

“I try to have a good time,” she said. “When people view my work, I hope it makes them smile”

Mylette Welch's studio is located .... in Healdsburg (California).