Settling into an oversized chair in his new downtown Scottsdale art gallery, Ron Burns looks around at the brightly colored, oversized acrylic paintings hanging on the walls. Dogs with blue ears. Dogs with green faces. Dogs with purple noses.

‘‘If you're going to be an artist, you do something that when someone walks into the room, they're moved by it,’’ he says. ‘‘And they're moved by it because it's something you don't see every day of the week.’’

Burns’ paintings certainly move people. Take Elizabeth Taylor, for example. The actress recently saw a book of Burns’ paintings at her physician's office and immediately commissioned a portrait of her own Maltese, Sugar. ‘‘She said, ‘I love your work. Do whatever you want, but I'd like to see a little lavender and purple. Those are my favorite colors,’ ’’ Burns says.

The north Scottsdale resident — whose annual Valley exhibition, this year titled ‘‘Drool,’’ opens Thursday — has come a long way since growing up on his grandparents’ Ohio farm. After graduating from Ohio State University, he moved to Los Angeles, where he and his wife, Buff, launched a successful graphic design company. Among their clients: Xerox, Blue Cross and Dick Clark Productions.

To relieve the stress of 20-hour workdays — made even longer when he began commuting from Arizona after the 1987 Whittier, Calif., earthquake — Burns returned to painting. His choice of subjects was inevitable. ‘‘We love our dogs,’’ he says. ‘‘Our pets are our kids.’’ So Burns began painting the couple's three shelter-rescued dogs — Sadie, Jazzie and Rufus — and their cats, Kingsford and Smokey. After years of client-imposed constraints — ‘‘Everyone seemed to demand navy blue or forest green,’’ he recalls — Burns was eager to expand his color palette.

‘‘There's something about the energy that comes from color,’’ he says of how he decides which hues to use in each painting. ‘‘I think certain colors mean certain things. I think the color that you put into a pet gives back an emotional feel of the character of that dog.’’ Visitors to their home loved the vibrant paintings. The only problem? His wife wouldn't let him sell them. ‘‘Buff said, ‘You're not going to sell pictures of our children,’’’ he says.

So Burns came up with another idea. On his travels around the country, he began stopping at animal shelters and photographing dogs and cats to be subjects for paintings. In addition to the bright, unexpected colors, Burns further tapped into his pop art influences by often placing his subjects in the windows of old trucks or sitting on vintage furniture.

‘‘I gravitated toward dogs because I love dogs, and I got the pleasure of being the first to do this kind of color and real abstract style — putting it all together and still have it look like a real dog,’’ he says. His paintings sold quickly, and Burns donated a portion of the money back to the shelters.

Soon, he was doing fund-raisers for the Arizona Humane Society, as well as other shelters nationwide. In 2000, he was selected for a one-year term as the Humane Society of the United States’ first artist-in-residence — five years later, he still holds the position — and in 2002 he published a coffee table book, ‘‘The Dogs of Ron Burns.’’ But just as his career was taking off, tragedy struck. ‘‘I went through a phase where I lost my dad.
We went through 9/11. We lost two of our dogs,’’ he says.

‘‘After all of that happened, I started reaching out and painting more search-and-rescue dogs, more therapy dogs and more assistance dogs.’’

Unlike his previous canine portraits, these new works were toned down and more realistic. ‘‘When I had all this death take place in a year’s time, I got a little more serious,’’ Burns admits. ‘‘I think the paintings still had the color, but the emotion from the dogs was a little more serious.

‘‘Now, as Americans, 9/11 changed our lives . . . but life goes on.’’ So for ‘‘Drool,’’ Burns is returning to portraits of shelter dogs in more fun, lighthearted settings. Many of the paintings even feature dog ‘‘families.’’
‘‘I don’t know whether it’s me getting older,’’ says Burns, who just turned 50, ‘‘but now it’s the mom dog, the dad dog and the baby dog in the truck.’’

Since opening their own gallery in January, the artist and his wife have taken a more hands-on approach with his growing art empire, which includes original commissions, limited-edition fine prints, inexpensive posters and even note cards. With the prices of Burns’ larger paintings approaching $20,000, imitations and counterfeits are constant concerns.

Some people have even printed images off the artist’s Web sites — www.ronburns.com and www.burnsstudio.com — to sell online as Burns ‘‘posters.’’ ‘‘We're on a first-name basis with the attorneys at e-Bay,’’ Buff says.

Meanwhile, another book of paintings is in the works. So is a line of wines, an idea born during the Burnses’ time in California’s Napa Valley. Later this month, Arizona will unveil a Humane Society license plate designed by Burns. For each plate sold, $17 will be donated to spay and neuter programs statewide. And then there’s the artist’s plan to experiment with three-dimensional art forms. ‘‘When I first got into the art world, I thought it would be cool to be in this semi-retired life where I would send paintings to galleries and they would sell them and I'd be happy’’ Burns says. ‘‘And I was — in the beginning. ‘‘Now, Buff and I don’t even think we've touched our success yet.’’