JACKSONPORT, Wis. (WBAY) – Tucked away in a workshop in the woods just outside Small Town Jacksonport, you’ll find artist Mike McCartney hard at work. His inspiration?
“Puppies. Dogs. They got that contagious smile,” McCartney said, beaming at his own dog, Joey. “They’re entertainment. They’re therapy. You take them for a walk out in the woods and let them do their thing and watch their nose.”
Born and raised in Chicago with a knack for art, Mike and his wife, Dede, moved to Door County when he was 21 to be closer to her family.
While working in a shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, hours away from the bustling art scene in the Windy City, Mike was still able to scratch his itch.
“I was always drawing (at) little fairs around Door County, caricatures,” Mike explained. “It was fun to do but not a living. I went to the other shipyard and lasted about ten years there and I go, ‘I got to draw.’”
It was a weekend favor for his mom that would change the course of his life.
“My mom asked me come to Great Dane National. I had no idea that I’d be drawing dogs,” Mike recalled. “It was pretty easy, because if I’m drawing a person like yourself, I really got to make, get it right, otherwise people go, ‘That doesn’t look like me.’ When you do the dogs, one Great Dane looks like all of them. It was a blast.”
The fun and success led Mike to another dog show and then another.
“The third dog show I went to, I told my wife, ‘I think we could do this. Let’s go all in.’ She was all for it,” Mike said.
“Everyone says ‘You’re never going to draw and make a living, all the way up.’ I was just the school of hard knocks. Stumble, trip and fall.”
Mike fell into a cauldron of success, turning his black-and-white card drawings into a full-scale operation with catalog deals, run with the help of his wife and kids, all on the family property in Jacksonport.
“We had all the kids working here, our son and daughter’s high school friends, and then I had a lady who would come in the evening and just run prints. They would just print shirts, cases, and cases of shirts, just keep printing shirts,” Mike recalled.
“I made the big leap from black-and-white into color, then we did some posters, and then those mugs I told you, we made travel mugs. We built this barn and found out what kind of equipment to do and how to do it ourselves. Little at a time, that’s it. It was a good family operation.”
Decades later, things have calmed down a bit. The kids are grown and moved away to chase their own careers, and Dede owns and operates a wine shop in downtown Sturgeon Bay.
“No more employees,” Mike said. “No more traveling to dog shows.”
That doesn’t mean the 70-year-old artist isn’t keeping busy, with pup Joey always by his side.
“Seven days (a week) drawing that calendar. It’s a lot of drawing, a lot of time to compose it after you draw, ink it and pencil it,” Mike said, referring to a cartoon dog calendar he creates annually, selling them on his website and in Dede’s shop. “They’re all whimsical. It’s all rated G and colorful and funny and silly. It’s all just to make you smile.”
A Small Town artist with immense talent, and a love for his art that will never fade.
“I can’t think of retiring. 70 years old, I just keep drawing silly pictures,” Mike said. “Make a drawing last all day.”
You can see Mike’s work by visiting his website, McCartney’s Dogs.
Copyright 2025 WBAY. All rights reserved.