"King the Be", oil on canvas, 14" x 16", 2002.

"The King", oil on canvas, 14" x 24", 2003.

"Sere", oil on canvas, 26" x 14", 2004.

"Baby Cheetah", oil on canvas, 12" x 20", 2004.

"Pinnacle Peak", Oil on canvas, 34" x 50", 2004.

"A View from the Shade", oil on canvas, 42"x72", 2004.

To the Potential Clients of Lucie Bilodeau                        

August, 2006

My wife and I live in Scottsdale Arizona . We are nearing retirement age but  are self employed in own engineering consulting firm with offices in several cities.  On one of the many flights I found a complementary copy of Wildlife Art containing Lucie’s haunting picture of a little lion cub called “King to Be”.  Neither Mary nor I know anything about art, and had never collected any art before. Our major eccentricity is that both of us have always loved cats.  We have always had cats from childhood thru marriage thru the child rearing years and now into advanced middle age. We bought the portrait sight unseen from her related gallery ( Joy Gallery ) without any contact with Lucie.  We followed that purchase with “The King”.  You might say that while we don’t know art, we know what we like.

Somewhere in this chain of events we contacted Lucie herself.  Prior to all this we purchased a Savannah kitten from one of the premier breeders, Dale & Holly Hummel (www.savannahcatbreed.com). It is a created breed using an African Serval as father and a domestic cat, usually a Bengal , as the mother. The product is a tall, large exotic housecat with striking markings. At the time Sere joined us it was a novelty, now it is a recognized breed and growing rapidly. Sere joined our family which included domestic short hairs and long hairs as well as Maine Coons a large domestic (and Native American) cat. Sere was so unusual, and valuable, that we wished to memorialize him appropriately with a quality portrait.  When the kids were young we had pictures drawn of our various cats at the local YMCA cat shows and the like. They were satisfactory at the time but for Sere we wanted a REAL portrait done by an outstanding professional artist. So, Lucie comes to Arizona .

Lucie spent endless hours just trying to get appropriate pictures of Sere, no small task. You cannot use flash so Lucie had to be patient with a cat that never keeps his ears still. Sere learned it from his father. A Serval earns his living with his large ears listening and scanning for rodents in tall grass. Lucie carefully locked in his colors with her color sketches. She also measured Sere as the portrait was to be full scale. She mapped the exact nature of his spots and stripes. Some months later a striking technical portrait arrives that displays Sere in breathtaking detail (every spot and stripe is exact). It now resides in our living room as a permanent tribute to the awesome beauty of this animal. We love to look at it and are proud for our friends and guests to see it.

The story does not end there. We have purchased “Baby Cheetah”, commissioned her to do a landmark mountain near us “ Pinnacle Peak ” and a very large painting “A View from the Shade”. Sadly, time moves on and we have lost several of our older cats to old age. Now Mary has purchased a second Savannah , Kruger, who like his older half brother is a striking beauty.  As soon as Kruger matures Lucie will have to pack her bags once again and head to the Valley of the Sun!

If you like what you see on Lucie’s web page, or you to wish a quality permanent memorial to your beloved pet then you may wish to consider Lucie.  While Mary and I based decisions on what we like we also had a neighbor in our community who owns four upscale galleries in the Valley.  At our request, he viewed her work and met Lucie while she was here. His comment: “She has real talent.” This further reinforced our own instinct. While Lucie obviously cannot compete with the “artist at the local YMCA”, we have found her work to be both high in quality and reasonable in price and thereby represent lasting value.

Finally, I want to point out that we have not asked for nor been offered any compensation or inducement to author this testimonial. We are simply a happy client.

Sincerely

Roland and Mary Ruhl

Windy Walk- Troon Communites

Scottsdale , AZ

Note: the authors can be reached at rlruhl@ruhl.com