Now I wanna paint your dog

When Glen Hettrick was living in New York City in the 1990s, he got a unique job offer from a friend: “You want to drive art around the city?” For a musician like Hettrick, it was sweet gig. He could still play shows with his bands at night, and by day he got to meet the likes of Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Ellsworth Kelly as he shuttled million-dollar artworks around the Eastern seaboard.

“I’ve been in the back room of every museum and gallery in New York,” Hettrick said during a recent interview at his art-filled apartment on the outskirts of Chico. “It opened my eyes to this whole other world. I just started doing it.”

Inspired by the art that surrounded him, he picked up a paintbrush and taught himself to make his own, eventually making a career out of creating acrylic paintings of pop culture figures, musicians and his most popular commissions, pets. As far as artist origins go, it’s a compelling one. But, as with most people, there’s a lot more to his story.

In New York, Hettrick threw himself into the music scene, playing in bands—Helldorado and a Misfits cover band called Skulls, to name a couple—at venues like legendary East Village punk institution CBGB. He even met his wife, Tammy Lynn, then frontwoman for Battershell, during that time. But by 2001, Hettrick said, the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle began to catch up to him, and an invitation from a co-worker—to a church service in the South Bronx—proved a catalyst for a big life change for the couple.

“We had an amazing time that day,” Hettrick said. “I ended up getting cleaned up and into Christianity. … [It] really saved my life.”

His painting had yet to take off, and by 2005 he put it on the backburner as the couple made the choice to come out West, to nearby Chester, where Tammy Lynn had family. Hettrick had been taking online Bible courses, and the goal was to open their own church in the little mountain town.

“[The move] from the East Village to Chester … was a horrific culture shock,” Hettrick acknowledged. That, coupled with the fact that the area was already saturated with places of worship, prompted another move—to the Bay Area—and a stint doing homeless outreach with the Homeless Church of San Francisco while living at the church’s recovery house, Grace Healing Home. There, he worked with the church’s pastor, Evan Prosser, a tireless homeless advocate whose active ministry inspired Hettrick with its devotion to meeting and helping people where they live—on the streets. “[They] walk it like they talk it,” he said.

The work was rough, especially emotionally, and after giving the church a go for about six months, the couple decided to leave. And Hettrick had made another decision as well: “I realized during that time that God made me to be a painter.”

Plus, there was another sign, a random advertisement for apartments that Hettrick saw passing through Chico on the way back to Chester from the Bay Area, and it prompted him to say to his wife, “Let’s just move to Chico.”

That was 2007, and the couple have lived in the same second-story apartment since. They’ve turned the outside porch into an impressive outdoor garden, and the inside into a colorful art gallery—largely of Hettrick’s work, with a fair amount of the pieces featuring their two dachshunds, Porkchop and Bitey. Hettrick pointed to a couple of early, rudimentary paintings of the dogs hanging above one window and said those were his first two pet portraits.

Once settled, Hettrick set up a “studio” on the dining room table and started a Facebook page for his fledgling Hettrickart business, posting those first “Porkchop” and “Bitey” works. To his surprise, he received his first commission almost immediately. A friend from back home (Hettrick grew up in eastern Ohio) hired him do a painting, which was followed by a request from another friend for a nine-painting old West series.

Between his two periods of life—his rock ’n’ roll days and Christian revival—a wide range of friends and acquaintances began flooding him with requests, to the point where he was painting and posting a painting a day. “Honestly, it never stopped,” Hettrick said. “[Everyone] just really came through for me, and I built this business.”

The pets featured on his website and Facebook page are a gallery of impressions of a wide variety of people’s fur babies—mostly dogs, but cats, too. Hettrick’s pop-art style lends itself to striking, iconic images, and he has a knack for catching an animal’s personality with catchlight highlights in expressive eyes.

When asked how many of his commissions are pet portraits, Hettrick said, “It used to be 95 percent, but over the years I’ve branched out into pop culture, everything from rock stars to superheroes.”

He’s also added sculpture to his repertoire, tiny polymer clay characters like Winnie the Poo, Paddington Bear and various gnomes.

But pets are still the bulk of the work—about 65 percent—and those commissions are largely what allows him to do art full-time.

As for their musical life, the couple still play. In fact, they are in a band together, Motel Jesus, an all-original pop, rock and country duo specializing in Christian songs and children’s music, plus, as Hettrick says, “We write songs about dogs.”