by Hea-Ream Lee
I am not an artist, but I love my dog. Or rather, I write so I guess that would make me an artist of the word variety, but I mean of the visual sort. Or rather, my family’s dog, Carly, who lives with my parents and sister in the suburbs of Baltimore. But yeah, I love her, and the bad art I make of her.
In order to make this bad art I look at pictures of her I’ve taken, pictures in which she is luxuriantly splayed out on her side with her little feet crossed like a proper princess. Or she’s sitting in such a position that her fluffy white fur gets pushed up and she looks like a swirl of icing atop a cupcake. Or she’s blurry because it’s a screenshot taken during a FaceTime call, when my mom holds her phone up to Carly’s face so I can talk to her and she can stare blankly back with her giant blueberry eyes. I love these pictures for the same reason that I love the dumb, bad art I make of her--because these representations are so earnest, so nakedly filled with love.
There is a photo of David Hockney in which he is sitting in front of a wall full of paintings he has done of his two weiner dogs, Boodgie and Stanley. The look on his face is one of smug and complete joy-- he is so clearly smitten with them. He slumps in a low-slung chair with his arms curled protectively around them in his armchair where they sit like sentries, or propped up sausages.
When I make art about my dog I think about her tiny little face--she’s a maltese pomeranian mix--and her floppy little ears and the gentle snoring sounds she exudes when she’s lying on the couch, and the laser beams she shoots at me with her eyes when I’m eating something that she wants a piece of, and her little chicken feet and her warm proteinous smell, like egg yolks, how she feels in my arms when I pick her up and carry her around baby-style--like a pillow full of warm jello. I like to think that the way I feel about her when I look at these pictures is replicated in my lopsided portraits of her.
GOOD DOG // BAD ART is an attempt at pulling together these earnest and joyful representations of my dog, and a celebration of bad art in general. Art that is devoid of nuance, or a point of view (other than ‘I love this thing’), art that does not intellectualize and asks no new questions, reveals nothing about the subject or the artist, little ole me.
Hockney wrote, “I make no apologies for the apparent subject matter… these two dear little creatures are my friends.” And so neither will I.
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| GOOD DOG // BAD ART |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Carly, 2019 Acrylic on canvas |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Carly, 2019 Acrylic on canvas |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Carly Sleeping, 2019 Polymer clay |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Bust of Carly, 2019 Clay |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Carly in repose, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint |
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| Hea-Ream Lee (b. 1993) Carly as cupcake, 2019 Graphite on newsprint |
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| A small alpaca doll that I bought in Hudson, NY because it reminded me of Carly |
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Carly, as marshmallow Carly taking in her own image |
The artist and her dog
