“…the first metaphor was animal.”  John Berger, "Why Look at Animals?"

In 2003, I adopted Beau the basset hound from a shelter in Brunswick, Maine to honor the first-year anniversary of my sister's death. A decade later, I began working with him. Adopting Beau struck me as the right way to honor Pat's life, as she loved her own dogs and donated to shelters and humane societies.

Artists through history used women as models and muses and these paintings are an extension and inversion of that tradition. The transitory nature of time and memory are the foundation of this body of work, which focuses on the relationship between my aging basset hound Beau - who appears as both model and avatar - and myself. 

In Travels with Beau and 13, I foreground my photographic sources to further explore the theme of time. While Travels celebrates years of our car rides together in the tradition of American road trips, 13 acknowledges Beau’s impending mortality.