Dennis McGregor Biography
Dennis McGregor is an artist, songwriter and children’s book author.
In his younger years Dennis played guitar and violin with the “acid-swing” band, Natty Bumppo. They toured, recorded and were well-loved for their original sound. It was fun, but not exactly profitable. A dozen years later, marriage, a mortgage and diapers came along, and “the road” was not quite so attractive.
So Dennis quit music to become a commercial artist. Maybe that would put food on the table better than music did, he hoped.
Nope! It was rough. He couldn’t get hired by an agency because he had no portfolio, relevant education, or work history. With freelancing being the only option, Dennis started doing graphic design work for friends and relatives. He made a humble living as a designer for another dozen years, but his real dream of becoming a painter eluded him.
That all changed when Dennis moved from Southern California to Central Oregon. In the tiny town of Sisters he declared himself a painter and started illustrating posters for events like the local rodeo, quilt show and music festivals. His work was clever and rich with colorful detail. His posters became popular and led to commissions from all over the country.
Creativity breeds more creativity, and life as a painter rekindled Dennis’s old songwriting itch. Three albums and hundreds of gigs later, Dennis is still playing out with his band The Spoilers, while his main activity continues to be painting.
Dennis’s first book happened by accident. In a series of paintings he had done for tourists, he found the spark of an idea for a children’s book. Combining Oregon Trail history with his adopted hometown’s obsession with quilting, (yes, quilting!) Dream Again, an illustrated epic western tale, was born.
Fast forward a couple of years. One day Dennis painted a turtle climbing on a fence. Then he added a bird—a dove.
Eureka! Without even meaning to, he’d painted a turtledove! Not one to let a clever idea go unexplored, Dennis made a list of other animals with shared names. Twenty paintings later, with a rhyming verse for each, another book, You Stole My Name, was published and received with wild enthusiasm. The regional (and national) popularity of You Stole My Name led to invitations to “sing the book” in schools and bookstores, as well as commissions for murals in public places. The book continues to find its way into a wider market as Dennis works on its sequel, “You Stole My Name Too”.
