Kenny Dale did not anticipate that his art career would include pet portraiture, even if he did think of his family’s dogs and cats as de facto siblings. But when he was about 13, his mom asked him to paint a memorial image of their dog Lucifer. “That’s how it started,” he said over coffee at Scout on North Avenue in Burlington last week. “I never thought it would come back around.” But it did. Dale said he painted animals off and on over the years — not all of them deceased, he clarified — but a request for another memorial portrait during the pandemic seemed to pick up the pace of commissions. “Then I heard from some cousins who wanted portraits. Then it was, ‘Do you do cats?'” he said. “I would do a turtle. I’d do a frog, a fish, anything.” Many of his paintings are cataloged on a dedicated Instagram account, @uncommon_pet_portraits. Scrolling through the images makes it clear why they merit that description. Dale’s graphic style and vivid, opaque palette set his works apart from more conventional renderings of beloved furry friends. Dale, 56, cuts a colorful figure himself. His sartorial choices favor offbeat thrift-shop finds, animal prints and handmade items, such as a hat expertly crocheted by his partner, Abbi Stern. He wears not one but two silver skull rings, also Stern’s handiwork. Dale’s left arm is tattooed in large capital letters: “SOUTH SIDE” — he’s a proud native of that area of Chicago. His right arm bears the motto “STAY GOLD,” which comes from a line in the film The Outsiders, Dale explained. “It basically means ‘Don’t lose your shine,'” he said. “I got it on my 50th birthday.” Dale attended Valparaiso University in Indiana on a scholarship for vocal music but switched to studio art. (“They let me keep my scholarship,” he noted.) After graduation in 1989, “I took my art degree and went back to music,” Dale said with a wry grin. First, he and some friends from high school formed an a cappella boy band in Chicago. Five years later, Dale joined his brother in New York City to start a rock band. Dale immersed himself in the city’s underground art and music scene, performing as well as painting. He exhibited and sold his work “mostly in bars and nightclubs,” he said, and eschewed the tonier gallery circuit.…