I started making these portraits because a photograph in a folder is not the same as a face on the wall. We take hundreds of pictures of the animals we love and then almost never look at them again. I wanted to give all of those small, ordinary days somewhere to live.

So I gather the photographs you send — the walks, the naps, the blurry ones you almost deleted — and compose a single portrait from them. From across the room it is simply their face. Up close, it is hundreds of the days you spent together.

I do not paint your pet, and nothing is generated or dreamed up by a machine. Every tile in the finished portrait is one of your own photographs. Once it is composed I go over the whole thing myself — checking it up close and reworking whatever does not sit right — and I only send it when it looks like the animal you know.

You see the finished portrait first, in full, and decide from there. I would rather you love it than merely receive it.

This work is tied to something larger than a print. In our first year, 10% of every sale goes to an animal non-profit — veterinary cancer research — so the making of one animal’s portrait quietly helps another. It keeps me honest about why I do this at all.

Eugene the artist at the bench