Dog Days, 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. Dog Days refers to the hottest period of the year, reckoned in antiquity with the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. 

More literally, Dog Days acknowledges the two dogs I was caring for in exchange for my stay at the Morse Avenue Artist Residency (May to August 2016).  My painting studio was in a beautiful little shed in the backyard of a San Fernando valley home – and it was a very hot summer of paintings. 

Dog Days can also suggest a period of lethargy, inactivity, or indolence, which I juxtapose with the enthusiastic production of many paintings of the ordinary objects of the studio despite the heavy heat of summer.  Though this work I came to a deeper understanding about painting light and depth and I developed a more methodical studio practice.

At some point during that 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).

I made paintings of the space around me, with big fluffy panting dogs laying at my feet. The title Dog Days comes from this bittersweet feeling of all the good fortune coinciding with the most oppressive heat during my residency with Rocky and Bella.