Roll over, Norman Rockwell! In a series of dog food ads, Bob Berran pays homage to the hero of
Movies, razors, Jesus and romance sum up the variety of Bob’s Berran’s life in art. His career as an illustrator has included the sacred and the profane, the tame and the tawdry, the vulgar and the Vulgate. His work has sold everything from soda pop to Schlitz, starlets to sedans, seduction to salvation.
He has painted it all with equanimity and fabulous attention to detail, and it in turn has supported him and his family, afforded them some of the better things in life and made the sum of his 83 years comfortable and happy. Paintings of courting couples, the men sporting silk waistcoats and the women in elegant dresses, line the walls of the spacious house where he lives with the wife of his youth. One wonders if the artist in the salad days of his career could have envisioned so complete a picture of prosperity at its summit?
If he had not been sickly as a boy his life might have followed a very different course. He was prone to bouts of pneumonia and stayed inside a lot in his hometown of Scarsdale, N.Y. Coloring books helped him while away the hours, and then he began copying cartoon characters from the funny papers. His favorites were the adventure strips Steve Canyon and Terry & the Pirates.
Read the entire article in the January 2008 issue
True Tails is a series written by Amy Robinson for Vero Beach’s dog lovers. Ask Amy about your dog’s behavior by clicking below.
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