“I love nothing more than to capture cats in the act of doing what cats do in my artwork.” I envision drawings that I want to illustrate my cat stories, sketching them out with artist’s pencils, creating a story board, then scanning the drawings, and painting them digitally. I’ve been influenced in my work by the impressionist painters whose works I was lucky enough to study up close at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris and the Musee de Van Gogh in Arles, in France.

You might have guessed that I, as a therapist (now retired), might write self-help books with practical advice to help people live happy, healthy lives. If you did, you were correct. First I wrote “Twelve Secrets of Happily Ever After Couples: A Love Prescription” and more recently published “Blissfully Single, A Single’s Guide to Finding Happiness,”after interviewing one hundred single people. In between I wrote four children’s books with sweet messages for kids of all ages about friendship and diversity (“Midnight and Moonlight”), mindfulness (“The Moon and Star”), the transformative power of live performance (“Tevye the Magical Theater Cat, an Introduction to Community Theater), and shyness (“Shadow Walkers, The Secret Lives of the Shy Sisters”). I am currently finishing the fifth of the award-winning series of Lessons from Cats, “Montana Cats”, which features the wildlife found near Glacier National Park. This will be the last in the series because the stories are based on cats I’ve known and loved and this completes the stories learned from our cats. Each book has stretched my artistic abilities and given me opportunities to improve my art, such as the one I’m working on now that takes place in the snow, so I had to learn about how to draw scenes mostly in a winter wonderland.

See more of Peggy’s work at peggysullivanbooks.com.