Blue Dog

BLUE DOG Acrylic on Birch Wood Panel | Triptych — 6ft × 4ft | 2017

In 2017 several things happened simultaneously.

In rural India, dogs began appearing blue. Not metaphorically blue. Literally, chemically, impossibly blue — the result of swimming in a river contaminated with synthetic dye leaking from a clothing factory upstream. The dogs had no idea they were blue. They were simply dogs, living their lives, made strange by the careless machinery of industrial production that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with us.

At the same time, a rare planetary alignment was occurring overhead — celestial bodies arranging themselves into a configuration that happens once in a very long time, indifferent to the blue dogs below, indifferent to everything.

And online, with the particular momentum of an idea whose time had inexplicably come, the flat earth movement was growing. Millions of people reconsidering the shape of the planet. The ground beneath the blue dog suddenly uncertain.

Blue Dog holds all of that simultaneously — the blue dog stands on a disc of raw red, the flat earth made literal and bleeding at the edges, planetary orbs arranged above in yellow, green and pink against a ground of deep indigo and near-black that is simultaneously night sky and industrial darkness and the particular blue of contaminated water. The panels spread the composition across six feet of birch wood — the triptych form of altarpieces, of sacred narratives, of things that require more than one panel to contain.

This is a painting about the world as it actually is — which is to say simultaneously scientifically explicable, cosmically indifferent, industrially catastrophic and completely, heartbreakingly beautiful. The dog is blue. The planets are aligning. The earth may or may not be flat. The factory is still running.

Blue Dog is one of the most conceptually significant works in the collection. It was not made to be sold easily. It was made to be lived with by someone who understands that the most important paintings are the ones that keep asking questions long after you've stopped looking for answers.

📦 Shipping & Details

• 6ft × 4ft triptych — three birch wood panels
• Acrylic on birch wood panel
• Signed and dated 2017
• Due to the exceptional scale and triptych nature of this work please contact us before purchasing to discuss shipping, installation and handling
• Certificate of authenticity included

One original. No reproductions. The dogs were blue. The planets were aligning. The factory is still running.