Artist comforts grieving pet owners through portraits

GREEN BAY, Wis. (Aging Untold) — Amy Bergner, an artist outside of Green Bay, is using her time off to comfort grieving pet owners through her artwork.

She still remembers all their names, even though it’s been months or even a year: Jasper, Wallace, Missy, Max, Bullet.

As a child, Bergner knew she had a gift.

“I used to love to draw horses and unicorns. Garfield and Odie, I loved drawing those, but mostly, mainly animals, dogs and cats and stuff,” Bergner said. “So, I always doodled in school and I knew I wanted to do something with it, but I just didn’t know what.”

Finding her calling

The revelation came when Bergner’s son was thinking about getting a tattoo and asked her to draw something.

“He wanted a picture of something that showed strength and endurance,” Bergner said. “So I thought about it. I drew a lion with a Bible verse, and once I did that, I wanted to do more.”

After launching a Facebook page called Art by Amy Jo, requests started coming in.

“They’ll send a picture of their pet to my phone and I print it off, and then I actually have a projector that I use and I make a rough outline of it, and then I just fill in all the details,” Bergner said.

Bergner uses chalk pastel pencils.

“I’ve done 50 dogs. I’ve done, I think, eight horses, about the same number of cats. And then I did one cockatiel, and I did one potbelly pig,” Bergner said.

Healing through art

Bergner said her work often brings tears of joy.

“It touches people’s hearts. I joke around that I’m good at making people cry, in a good way,” Bergner said.

Each portrait takes around 13 hours to complete.

“It’s a gift that I’m humbled by. I’m not doing this to gloat on myself,” Bergner said. “I’m doing it for one thing, because I started later in life. You know, I’ve always wanted to do something with art. And I thought maybe commercial advertising. I’d love to work for Disney, you know, things like that, but it’s when it’s your time.”

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