The Mouse Project

Some months ago, Steve Worthington contacted me to ask if I would be interested in participating in a project he was putting together to raise money to support animal shelters. Steve is a sculptor, working in bronze, and creates the most amazing animals. If you haven't been to his site, it's well worth a visit. I happily accepted his invitation along with 21 other artists. The task was to choose one of his mice, which Steve would then send to us, and we were to use it as the focus of a painting. These paintings would then be collected into a book, which would be sold, and the profits distributed to animal shelters. The project is now complete, the book is ready, but I'll let Steve describe the project in his own words.

Me

The Mouse Project

I never planned to call it that, people just started saying it, and so it stuck.

The mice in question are Sprightly, Nosey and Chubby: Three of the many bronze critters I've made. They've developed lives of their own, traveling across America, to Antarctica, Australia and populating plenty of places in between.

Not wanting the fun to end there, I decided to see if the best painters I could find online might be coaxed into painting them so I could curate a book and donate the profits to animal shelters. I thought I'd start by asking only the best, not really sure what kind of response to expect. To my utter delight and disbelief the answers came back with a resounding, "YES"!

Paul Coventry-Brown

Top notch painter after top notch painter wanted in. So I dispatched a small army of mice to get their portraits painted! A PDF and a book are the end result. In the free PDF you’ll only find 22 lower resolution images (one per painter).

There are over 60 high resolution images of 47 original paintings by 22 painters in the actual book. Hopefully it will sell like hot cakes and make a bunch of money for animal shelters.

In the PDF there are links for you to be transported to the artists websites or blogs.

Jeffery Hayes

That’s why, in the real book, I recommend downloading the PDF as a companion. So you can treat yourself by visiting their web pages one click at a time.

Should you go to Lulu.com and then buy the real book, congratulations - and thanks! You're in for a treat, and you’ll be helping an animal shelter.

I really can't express my gratitude to everyone involved enough. They went all out, as you can see. Way beyond what I expected.

Jelaine Faunce

The images I've chosen above are a very small sampling of the total number of paintings in the book. I could have included many more, but didn't want to spoil the surprise. The book is 79 pages with more than 60 images, and sells for $49.45 with the profits going to support animal shelters. It was a fun project, for a great cause, and I was honored to be invited to participate. So, if you've got 50 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, picking up a copy (or two) of the Mouse Project would be money well spent.