Dog plays into hearts of art’s elite

? You think Eddie, the Jack Russell terrier from “Frasier,” was talented? Ha! All he had to do was sit there and look cute on cue — and his show isn’t even on television anymore.

Tillie — now there’s a dog with some real bite.

The 5-year-old Jack Russell is an artist who has had her paintings exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Europe. She recently opened a gallery and store in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the borough’s epicenter of all things artsy and hip.

Her intense, instinctive scratch marks — in red, blue, yellow and black — have drawn comparisons to such abstract artists as Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly.

You may be wondering, how does a creature with nonopposable thumbs accomplish such a hands-on craft? She gets a little help from Bowman Hastie, her human companion, who discovered her talent when she was just 6 months old.

Hastie, a 35-year-old writer, noticed Tillie pawing furiously at one of his notepads one day. “She really had a sense of focus and determination. She was honing in on the surface,” he said. “I was amazed by it.”

As an experiment, he put a piece of carbon paper in front of her, and faster than you could say Pablo Picasso, an artist was born.

Now Tillie — whose full name is Tillamook Cheddar — has developed her technique over the years. Hastie takes a piece of pigmented paper and places it face-down on another sheet of paper that’s mounted onto a mat board. Tillie then takes this canvas in her mouth and carries it to her workspace, where she nibbles and claws at it feverishly.

Whatever is left on the canvas is her final creation — though she gets so carried away sometimes, she ends up destroying her own work.

At the recent opening of Tillie Ltd., though, she showed a far more cordial disposition. The 18-pound pup trotted between the small, spare, concrete-floored storefront, where her original oil paintings mounted on the walls sell for $1,000, and the sidewalk outside, where visitors perused a table piled with T-shirts featuring her designs. She greeted friends and fans by wagging her tail and begging sweetly for the nuggets of cheese for which she’s named.

The artistic dog Tillamook Cheddar, or Tillie for short, creates a piece of art during the grand opening of Tillie Ltd. in New York. The 5-year-old Jack Russell's gallery opened June 2, and there's also a store in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the borough's epicenter of all things artsy and hip.

“I didn’t own a Tillie and I had to own one, and partly because I know the artist,” said 31-year-old Rebecca Weisberg of Manhattan, explaining why she spent $40 on an art box — a square lamp adorned with the dog’s bold marks in pink and white.

Hastie insists success hasn’t gone to Tillie’s head. In her downtime, she still takes part in normal canine activities at Brooklyn’s dog-friendly Prospect Park.

“She likes jumping and catching balls, chasing squirrels,” said Hastie, nursing a drink and schmoozing with visitors on the artist’s behalf. “Her process when she’s working is a combination of work instinct and play instinct. I don’t think she thinks, ‘I’m an artist. I’m making art.”‘

Art dealer Mike Pollack, who has sold some Tillies, expects that her more unusual items may do well, such as the 5-pound bags of dog food that feature a limited edition, green-and-yellow print. (Those go for $100, by the way, and are billed as “the world’s most expensive dog food.”)

“More sophisticated art types have bought her stuff and think it’s going to be worth money,” says Pollack, who added that Europeans have been far more open to the idea of dog art than Americans.

“I don’t think another dog can do this,” he says. “This dog is different for whatever reason.”