Four Hundred and Fifty Wild Dogs

The Lycaon Pictus, or African Wild Dog, is a subject matter that the artist has infused with his own psychology and tension surrounding the concept of the pack. It is common for children who encounter adverse conditions to retreat into a dreamworld of imaginary friends. My painting is all set in that world. Animals often become invested with a magical other worldly quality to the child like mind. A special wisdom. Lycaon Pictus forms small often homosocial packs to range far across the African savannah in search of prey and another pack of the opposite gender. The two pack leaders breed with the full familial support of the large hunting pack. I find it unfair and poignant that these animals, so loyal, such successful hunters (achieving success rates of over fifty percent) and with such a sustainable breeding pattern, were they but still in the limitles wild of Africa in which they evolved, cannot survive now without conservation and assistance. I feel a lot like that sometimes, as though my ways are just not compatible with the modern world and it’s voracious hunger, a hunger which is like that of the dogs, but not tempered by a willingness to breed a controlled pack as the dogs do. Our world consumes all and grows itself no matter what. I can’t shake the feeling that if we thought of ourselves as a pack and not as a group of individuals, we may do better at limiting the dangers of our excesses. That caring for our brothers and sisters first is a philosophical cypher for survival on planet Earth. Humans are failing at this. Our competitive self interest is even more unsustainable than the voracious hunting of the Wild Dogs.

Understanding each others art is a way to make all humanity members of the same pack.

By painting the Wild Dogs, the ideas about love that the pack kindles in me find transmission to the viewer. Feelings of togetherness. Of beauty and grace despite adversity. The value of the dream world and how our aspirations can improve us…