About Raven.
Raven OKeefe has been an artist most of her life, working in watercolor and pen-and-ink, mostly in service of animals — the ones people love, and the ones that simply catch her eye.
Decades at the easel.
Pet portraiture is the constant thread — commissioned watercolor and pen-and-ink pieces built from a client's own photos, worked until the likeness, the markings, and the particular expression of one animal are unmistakably right. Over the years that same eye and hand has gone into a standing collection of totem animals, farm-life scenes, and smaller studies of whatever creature happens to be nearby.
Two of her longer-running bodies of work — the border collie and sheepdog art known as BC Styleyes, and the sheep-themed art and goods of Sheep Thrillz, tied to the farm's own sheepdog trial — have grown into brands of their own and are carried today through the Wolston Farm store.
Raven also spent years doing illustration work for hire — book covers and children's-book art among it — and still takes on the occasional project for a handful of longtime clients, though it's no longer the focus.
On the farm
When she's not painting, Raven maintains the large vegetable gardens at Wolston Farm in Scio, Oregon, takes care of the baby lambs each spring, and does much of the day-to-day work that keeps a working sheep farm running. She shares the farm with her husband, Ian Caldicott, their Border Collies, livestock guardian dogs, and a flock of Shetland, Scottish Blackface, and Black Welsh Mountain-cross sheep.
Have an animal in mind?
Raven takes on a limited number of new portrait commissions at a time — reach out to start the conversation.
Commission a Portrait