Earlier this month, a bunch of artists from the San Francisco Bay area took part in a project to honor 25 dogs in the Oakland Animal Services system. Each painter or illustrator was paired with a dog looking for a forever home and given free reign to interpret the pup’s personality in the artist’s own style. Even better, anyone adopting one of the dogs also received the accompanying one-off artwork.
The full range of art is currently on display in Oakland — but if you’re unable to check out the Home Is Where The HeART Is exhibition in person, here are five of the best to peruse here on Dogster.
Oakland-based Bar Davi has built up a spirited portfolio of pooch portrait paintings. Here the artist has turned her touch to Carmelo and accentuated the dog’s distinctive black splodge around the right eye.
The art of printer and illustrator Michael Wertz has been lauded by galleries and corporate clients alike. When given the task of creating a portrait of Dahlia, he spruced up her photo with a thoroughly contemporary process.
Painter Adrienne Simms decamped from New York City to San Francisco when a teenager. These days, her artwork looks to explore the “tension between the macabre and the humorous,” although I like to think her brushwork on young Bauer here imbues him with a stately sheen.
Kim Roth is an illustrator who also runs a boutique stationery studio. Fittingly, her interpretation of Sally-Jane uses typography to turn the dog’s beaming face into a tenderhearted motif.
Frolicking in the field of mixed media, David Polka bills his art as an attempt to reveal “the lines connecting different facets of our existence with irrevocable patterns of life and death, destruction and rebirth.” Frankly, I just think his treatment of lil’ Pepper here looks kinda slick and cool.
See more Pix We Love on Dogster:
- #FrenchBulldogProblems: These Dogs Are Living the Hashtag
- Check Out These Pups Kissing to the Best ’80s Power Ballads
- I Dressed Up My Dog for the Mardi Gras Barkus Parade
About Phillip Mlynar: The self-appointed world’s foremost expert on rappers’ cats. When not penning posts on rap music, he can be found building DIY cat towers for his adopted domestic shorthair, Mimosa, and collecting Le Creuset cookware (in red). He has also invented cat sushi, but it’s not quite what you think it is.
