oil and vine charcoal on canvas
26.5 x 11.5 inches
2016
oil and graphite on panel
11.5 x 14.25 inches
2016
14 x 11”
oil on canvas
2016
oil on canvas
16 x 20"
2016
14 x 11"
oil on panel
2016
12 x 18”
oil, graphite, and charcoal on panel
oil on canvas
16 x 20"
2016
oil on canvas
20 x 20 inches
2016
10 x 17.5”
oil, graphite, and charcoal on canvas
2016
14 x 11”
oil on canvas
2016
30 x 22”
tempera and oil on warped found canvas
2016
Dog Days was the culmination of an independent study project and my Senior Show for my undergraduate at Art Center College of Design in 2016. I was staying at a house in the San Fernando Valley that summer, taking care of a labrador and a golden retriever, Bella and Rocky.
It was a very hot summer of painting in a backyard in the San Fernando Valley. It was a tough time for me at Art Center because I was removed from the Fine Art Department’s Senior Projects course due to my status as an Illustration major - meanwhile the institution allowed a different Illustration student to take the same class. My request to the Illustration department for a studio had also been rejected.
During those months, I turned the shed in the backyard into a painting studio and thereby had my first artist residency.
At some point during the summer, all of Santa Clarita caught fire. The sky turned a bruisey purple yellow, and ashes fell onto all of my wet and in-progress paintings. I embraced the ashes, because I had already gotten used to all the dog hair, as well as June bugs hiding in every nook and cranny of the studio (they enjoy the back of stretched canvases).
During my show’s reception, campus security was sending people away, on a false claim that I had not done the proper paperwork - which actually had been done, but had not been forwarded by the administration to security.
Despite all the strange art-school politics, I hold a tender, bittersweet place in my heart for my time in that sweltering hot studio. For months, I just made paintings of the space that was around me, with big fluffy panting dogs laying at my feet.
The title Dog Days comes from this biterweet feeling towards all the good and bad coinciding at once, during my residency with Rocky and Bella.