Some of you dear reader(s) may recall that I’ve mentioned in this blog that I’ll be in an exhibition with the Frost Shield Kerfuffle collective next year entitled Damaged Landscapes. You also may have noticed that I’m not exactly a landscape painter, so it won’t come as a surprise to you that I’m thinking about not taking that title too literally. The thing I keep coming back to, is most of the damage being done to landscapes these days is by those pesky damned humans. And the thing that I always find particularly crazy about that, is most of the humans know we’re causing the problems but some refuse to accept the evidence! Those of us who are aware of the problem try to at least do the odd thing to help mitigate the problem (I’m talking about climate change here–you knew that). For example, my wife and I don’t own a car and haven’t since 2006. And we live in Winnipeg. Everyone who can afford a car in Winnipeg owns a car. It’s the law. Practically…
So if humans are causing the damage then my inclination is to make my contribution to the show all about that fact. Once again, I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the thoughts I’ve had was to paint animals utilizing my take on psychological cubism. So a couple of weeks ago, I did this painting of a dog with that in concept in mind. And I feel like it works. This painting could be interpreted as the dogs reaction to the human-caused problems. But then, I thought to myself: “is a dog really the kind of animal that would best represent that idea?” And I think the answer is, probably not. Dogs love people. People can do no wrong in the eyes of a dog! Having said this, I think this painting, or ones with dogs in them, could work on a slightly different level.
The painting reminded me of a series of drawings of dogs I did when I was in art school entitled (not) Darwin’s Dogs. The idea behind these drawings was that dogs are creatures that humans have essentially created by altering wolves through artificial selection. Which is all well as good, we’ve ended up with our best friends (says the dogless guy with two cats). But that wasn’t really what the drawings were about. They were about how humans just had to take things a step further and try to create the perfect dog(s). A sort of dog eugenics, the results of which can be observed regularly at dog shows.
Purebred dogs are known for having all kinds of medical issues, so in the drawings I decided to push this to its absurd conclusion.
But perhaps this new painting could be interpreted as a new take on the same issue? After all, doesn’t this guy look like he might have a few issues? Maybe he can’t get that tongue back in his mouth and he probably can’t breathe very well either. Now I feel sad when I look at the painting! But maybe I should do a few more of these, because perhaps the idea that humans have done damage to dogs is a metaphor for what we’ve done to the planet? Is that a stretch? Maybe I should do more and see how it goes. My contribution could be a series of various animals with a dog thrown in? Wait, this isn’t a solo show so I only need a few. I’ll let you know how it goes! Next week (or sometime soon), my other idea for the exhibition.