My body of work extends the academic concept of feminist dog-writing into my own practice of feminist dog-painting.1 Dog-painting invites humans to seriously engage with pet-centered accounts of life that are often sentimentalized and trivialized.
In taking seriously the notion that companion dogs are not human accessories, but rather subjects in and of themselves who actively shape the world we live in, my work offers up the feminist principles of resisting hierarchies, dismantling oppressive power relations, and imagining liberatory futures.
I play with brush strokes, surface weave, color, scale, and employ repetitive conceptual focus to explore themes of subjecthood, objecthood, and dominance (or, rather, the resistance of).
My work asks audiences to reflect on their relationships with dogs and power. After all, “to lie on the ground with dogs is to think through what an alternative world might look like.”2
Throughout this body of work, “my” dog Franky (along with the creatures and concepts that circle her) maintains her position as my primary point of focus– as she does on and off the canvas.
1 Haraway, Donna J. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Vol. 1. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
2 Dayan, Colin. With Dogs at the Edge of Life. Columbia University Press. Columbia University Press, 2015.