Dog Art for People Who Don’t Want Boring Dog Art

There is nothing wrong with a beautiful portrait of your dog.

We should probably establish that immediately.

A good portrait can capture an expression, a memory or the particular look your dog gives you when dinner is approximately four minutes late.

We love them.

But dog art doesn’t have to stop there.

It can be enormous.

Strange.

Beautiful.

Ridiculous.

Quiet.

Sophisticated.

Or just funny enough that somebody walking into your house stops, looks at the wall and says:

“Where did you get that?”

That’s the dog art we’re interested in here.

Not something you hang on the wall simply because you love dogs.

Something you’d want on the wall even if you didn’t.

The Coffee Dog

There is subtle dog art.

This is not subtle dog art.

A wide-eyed, spectacularly dishevelled dog grips an enormous mug of steaming coffee as though whatever happened immediately before this portrait was considerably more exciting than we’re being told.

The scale makes it even better.

Hung enormous in a warm, beautifully designed room, it isn’t a little pet-themed accessory tucked onto a shelf.

It’s the art.

And somehow, surrounded by walnut, ceramics, plants and good furniture, the ridiculousness becomes considerably more sophisticated.

Nobody is walking into this room without asking about that painting.

The Art Gets Better When You Live With It

Here’s the other thing we love about dog art.

It doesn’t have to turn your house into a shrine to your dog.

The room can still be grown-up.

The furniture can still be beautiful.

The architecture can still matter.

And you can sit in a great chair with your morning coffee while an enormous painting of a slightly unhinged dog holding his own coffee hangs behind you.

The actual dog sleeping beside the chair makes this one even better.

He’s calm.

The dog in the painting very clearly isn’t.

We’ll take both.

The Wet Dog

There are few moments less dignified than the second a wet dog decides to shake.

Which makes it an excellent subject for a very large piece of art.

Imagine the movement frozen mid-shake: ears flying, water exploding from the coat, expression somewhere between joy and complete chaos.

Now hang it in an immaculate, beautifully designed bathroom.

That’s the contrast we’re after throughout this collection.

Serious room. Serious artwork. Deeply unserious subject.

The Stick, No. 7

Every dog owner has thrown away a stick only to discover that it was apparently the stick.

Not another stick.

Not the nearly identical stick lying three feet away.

That one.

So perhaps we’ve underestimated them.

One battered stick, isolated against an enormous canvas and treated with all the seriousness of an important contemporary still life, could be genuinely beautiful.

Give it a museum-sized frame.

Hang it above a spectacular sofa.

Don’t explain it.

The Cone

Few objects have destroyed more canine dignity than the plastic veterinary cone.

Which is precisely why we’d like to see one immortalized.

A beautifully painted, almost classical portrait.

Perfect lighting.

Formal pose.

Regal dog.

Cone of shame.

The joke doesn’t need anything else.

Waiting at the Window

Not everything needs a punchline.

A dog sitting quietly at a window can be one of those ordinary scenes you barely notice while you’re living with it.

Until one day it isn’t there anymore.

Painted beautifully—from behind, perhaps, with afternoon light falling across the floor—it becomes something entirely different.

Still dog art.

Still unmistakably personal.

But quiet enough to live with for decades.

The Tennis Ball Triptych

One tennis ball is a toy.

Three enormous paintings of the same battered tennis ball begin to look suspiciously like contemporary art.

Especially if each canvas studies it differently.

The perfect new ball.

The thoroughly used ball.

The almost unrecognizable object your dog still refuses to surrender.

Displayed as a triptych in a highly polished modern interior, we’d absolutely believe somebody paid far too much money for it.

Which means it probably works.

The Vacuum Cleaner

Art history has given us extraordinary paintings of battles.

Armies charging.

Ships sinking.

Heroes confronting impossible odds.

We think it’s time somebody documented one of the great conflicts taking place in homes every week.

Dog versus vacuum cleaner.

Paint it beautifully.

Make it dramatic.

Give the dog the heroic lighting he believes the situation deserves.

After the Walk

Mud on the paws.

Leash on the floor.

Dog completely exhausted.

There doesn’t need to be a joke.

Painted loosely and beautifully, this is simply a moment most dog owners recognize immediately.

And sometimes that’s enough.

Portrait With Evidence

He didn’t do it.

Obviously.

The destroyed cushion beside him is circumstantial.

The stuffing attached to his face proves nothing.

And frankly, he finds the accusation hurtful.

We’d treat this one as a completely formal portrait: beautiful chair, exceptional lighting, dignified pose and one tiny piece of evidence that completely changes the painting.

Two Minutes Before Dinner

Dog owners know the expression.

The staring begins.

Then the following.

Then the sitting directly in your line of sight.

Eventually, you’re dealing with an animal who appears genuinely concerned that nobody in the household understands how clocks work.

Forget the whole dog.

Paint the face.

Huge.

A slightly expressionistic close-up devoted entirely to the stare could be one of the funniest pieces in the collection.

The Squirrel

Technically, this isn’t dog art.

It’s a beautiful natural-history study of a squirrel.

Exquisitely rendered.

Tastefully framed.

Almost scientific in its detail.

But hang it in a house where a dog spends approximately 40 percent of his waking life monitoring squirrels through the window and its presence starts making considerably more sense.

Perhaps the dog commissioned it.

Sunday Morning

An unmade bed.

Soft morning light.

A dog asleep somewhere in the blankets.

Nothing happening.

That’s the whole painting.

And it might be one of the best pieces in the collection.

Because dog art doesn’t always have to celebrate what makes dogs funny.

Sometimes it can capture what makes living with them so good.

The Great Escape

At first glance, it’s a landscape.

Beautiful garden.

Deep green hedge.

Wonderful light.

Then you notice two back legs and a tail disappearing through a hole in the shrubbery.

That’s it.

The entire story happens at the edge of the painting.

And once you’ve noticed the dog, you’re probably never going to look at the garden first again.

The Collection

Perhaps your dog doesn’t need a portrait at all.

Perhaps he needs a retrospective.

One favourite ball.

A chewed toy.

An old collar.

A spectacular stick.

The object he has carried around for eight years despite nobody understanding why.

Photographed, painted or displayed together with the seriousness of objects in a museum collection, they become a portrait without showing the dog once.

Anyone who knows him would recognize him immediately.

Maybe Dog Art Should Be More Fun

Your home doesn’t need dog art.

It doesn’t need paintings of tennis balls, heroic battles with vacuum cleaners or enormous portraits of dogs experiencing caffeine-related difficulties.

That’s rather why we like them.

Homes become interesting when the people living in them stop decorating entirely according to what they’re supposed to like.

You hang something because it’s beautiful.

Because it makes you laugh.

Because it reminds you of somebody.

Because nobody else you know would possibly have bought it.

Or because you’ve spent years sharing your house with a strange little creature who steals your chair, watches squirrels, destroys tennis balls and somehow became part of almost every good memory made there.

So yes.

Put the dog on the wall.

Just don’t make him boring.