PEGGY HARRIS


Peggy Harris is perhaps best known today for her love of animals and her books teaching her methods of painting them.

Peggy considers herself very fortunate in that she grew up in a family in which her parents were very supportive of her art. Additionally, growing up in Kansas City gave her access to art classes at the Kansas City Institute of art. After high school, she attended the University of Kansas where she ended up with a triple major in art history, Asian studies and Chinese language. She then continued to pursue her fine arts degree by taking more art classes.

In 1965, Peggy Harris married Bob Sanders. Bob was a professional musician whose career eventually brought them to Nashville, where they decided to buy a home. Having always been a lover of baby animals, her inspiration came one evening as she and her husband were visiting with friends, who had just opened a home-art-show business. While they were discussing the venture and the wide variety of art available, Peggy asked what it was that they could not get. Their reply was that animals, in particular baby animals, were hard to find. That was the start of it all for Peggy Harris.

As demand for her paintings grew, Peggy  began to experiment with better, easier ways of painting feathers and fur. In 20 years, over 100,000 paintings were produced, by hand, by her studio. All were sold, most of them before they were even painted. Peggy’s “Harris Critters” were in great demand.

Peggy's husband, Bob, became involved in commercials and television production. One day Peggy remarked that she had seen some of the painting shows on PBS and thought she could do as well with her technique for painting baby animals. Bob contacted the local public station and soon Peggy  was teaching her baby animal painting methods on PBS
stations nationwide - a series which came to be 65 segments shown all across the country.

To date, Peggy Harris has authored many instructional books, both in acrylics and oils, pertaining to her method of painting baby animals.

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