When I meet Fiona via video chat, the pitbull-retriever mix is standing innocently on a painting in progress on Leslie Martinez’s Dallas studio floor. It’s startling to see, but the artist is unfazed. “She walks around on all this stuff—she lives with it,” says Martinez. “I work in a way that is very unprecious. Anybody could just walk all over the material, and that’s fine.”
Artists with dogs quickly learn the necessity of being unprecious with their artworks, according to the seven rapidly rising artists Vogue spoke with recently. But for the most part, these art dogs implicitly understand to steer clear of the works; mishaps are rare. And what they supply artists seems to equal or surpass the care or attention they demand.
When it comes to going on walks, for example, “there’s value to the interruption,” says Martinez; they are more of a generative interlude than an unwelcome disruption. “I can get inspiration from the light or little things shimmering on the ground and come back with a refreshed sense of energy.” Or as Brooklyn artist Dominique Fung puts it of her dog: “He breaks me out of my thought patterns. If I didn’t have a dog, I would just spiral.”
In fact, many say dogs bring them back to their humanity. New York artist Jean Shin calls her dog “a reminder of how we all as a species need fresh water or air or a break. We, as artists, often think of just the work, and in the flow, hours pass and we realize we haven’t moved our bodies or taken a break. Seeing him take pleasure in watching birds or chasing things or smelling—to be aware of our surroundings, to play, those are all things we all need but sacrifice for our work.” Los Angeles artist rafa esparza adds: “As artists, we can easily get absorbed into the studio. A dog that shows you unconditional love and needs that in return has been a humbling, grounding experience.”
Many artists credit their dogs for instituting a healthier work-life balance. “After hour four or so, she starts whining,” says Chicago artist Yvette Mayorga of her dog. “It’s actually helpful because I can be such a workaholic and not listen to my body. She helps set the boundaries.”
New Haven, Connecticut-based painter Dominic Chambers agrees. “So many artists spend just an absurd amount of hours alone, in a space with characters we’re making up in our heads or with ideas that only make sense to us. So it’s great to have something that decenters you, gets you to engage with the world, and maybe gets you some fresh air and not smelling like turpenoid for 24 hours.”
Dogs can even become part of the work, in ways both direct and oblique. esparza modeled concrete sculptures after his American bully Chico’s “little bulky body” to stanchion off other works in a current Oakland Museum show. “Some paintings in the show point to ancient Aztec cosmologies where dogs are spiritual guides for people into the afterlife,” he says. “It just made sense that the dog guarding these objects would be Chico.”
Chambers’s Shiba Inu sometimes lies on his canvases as they’re being stretched. “I’m sure there are paintings either in institutions or collectors’ homes that have traces of my dog’s paw prints or her fur on the back,” he says. “If it’s a surface on the floor, in her mind it’s now a bed.”
In a corner of their studio, Martinez keeps a bucket where they’ve started collecting Fiona’s chewed-up toys and scraps of paper, string, and other items that have faced the dog’s destruction. “At the end of her life, I’ll make a painting of her contributions, with her scraps and collars and tags,” they say, turning wistful. “It’ll just be a painting for me, to memorialize her.”
Here, seven artists reflect on the art of living with dogs and art.
Dominique Fung
Dominique Fung’s 14-year-old Shiba Inu rescue, Gucci, pretty much keeps to himself in her Williamsburg studio—with one exception. “I was painting snow using walnut-based paint, and the entire bottom of the painting was titanium white,” she recalls. “Gucci disappeared for a little, and when I went over, his whole face was covered in white paint. He had been licking the walnut oil paint. He probably ate half a tube. I googled, ‘Will dogs die after eating paint?’ The articles said it should be fine, just watch when he poops the next few days to make sure it’s out of his system. And, yes, his poop was white.”
Yvette Mayorga
Yvette Mayorga’s four-year-old Victorian Bulldog Roco (short for Rococo, after the art style in which she often finds inspiration) is, according to the Chicago artist, bossy, stubborn, and a little bit of a diva. She doesn’t like to get her feet wet, so puddles and rain must be circumnavigated; her favorite snacks are salmon skin and tortilla chips from one specific place (Antique Taco); and the place she’s most likely to be at a dog park is the nearest bench. “She’s a Pisces,” Mayorga notes. “She’s very caring, loves to cuddle, but she holds receipts and gives good side-eye.”
In the studio, Roco observes Mayorga’s mark making. “She’ll follow the brush or piping bag. She’s curious about it. And she likes the smell of the paint—we have so many pictures with pink paint on her butt or face. Twice she’s scooted back into a work and I’ve had to remake that part.”
And then there’s those adorable face folds, which demand upkeep. “I apply a special balm for her face and paws twice a day,” Mayorga says, admitting that routine takes her out of her creative flow because she has to switch gloves. “She’s basically between a high-maintenance baby and a dog.”
Jessi Reaves
Jessi Reaves found her long-haired dachshund, Pamela, on Craigslist four years ago while looking for materials for her signature sculptures that also function as furniture. “I was looking for ‘funky old broken’ this and that. Then I was like, I’ll search ‘puppy.’”
Instead of being concerned about a dog ruining her works, Reaves was excited by the potential to enhance them. “Sometimes I’m looking for other ways of making detail in my work that would be perceived as negative or undesirable—a piece of furniture with scratches or a broken seat that becomes something else. I was like, Wouldn’t it be great to build something out of wood and then have a bunch of dogs chew on it?” When Pamela was teething as a puppy, Reaves would give her a stick out of her sizable collection to chew, and she later incorporated them into works, but, she chuckles, “I’ve never gotten to do the full chomp.”
Reaves says Pamela has had a profound effect on her life, soothing her stress and anxiety, albeit negatively impacting her productivity somewhat. “It’s hard to focus because I love being with her. And my process is very physical, and you have to have energy—she’s just made me a calmer person. It’s good to have a bit of extra emotion to put into work, but she gets a lot of my extra emotion.”
rafa esparza
Los Angeles artist rafa esparza often works with dirt, making adobe bricks that end up as tiles on gallery floors. A friend’s dogs loved sprawling out on the dirt-paved studio floor—and got maybe a bit too comfortable. “They peed or pooped on the artwork a few times, but they’re really good dogs, and they showed me how possible it was to have a dog in the studio.” (He would just remove the affected tile and remix it into another batch; his favored adobe actually has horse manure in it, although he notes that’s a very different material.)
Today he finds Chico a perfect studio companion, perceptive and adaptable. “People would come and do studio visits, and he’d get excited because he’d have new people to say hi to. Over the course of a few months, he started to understand that not everyone was there just to play with him, that they were to work with Dad. And he totally got it. He would still greet everyone but then retreat to his bed. He’s very smart.”
Jean Shin
Trevor, a tiny Chihuahua-pomeranian mix rescue from Puerto Rico, loves a good art party. “You know all the free art totes you get?” says artist Jean Shin. “He’s small enough I can put him in those. He’s just delighted when he sees one of my bags open up—he’s ready to jump in. It calms him, being right next to me, under my arm, and he loves being social.”
Shin is known for assembling elaborate sculptures and installations with cast-off materials, and her vast upstate New York studio is abuzz with heaving materials and labor-intensive work. That’s not Trevor’s bag. “He was like, That’s too much. So he checks in and steps around to see what’s going on. But he loves the quietness of my apartment. He’s literally in my bed, waiting for me all day.”
Dominic Chambers
Painter Dominic Chambers quickly learned about the Shiba Inu’s noted intelligence—and mischievousness. He once left three-year-old Mars alone at his home for a couple of hours longer than he perhaps should have. “I came back, and all my erasers were chewed up—none of my pencils but specifically the erasers. It was almost as though my dog was letting me know, Yeah, you can draw all you want, but you won’t be able to fix any of your mistakes. She was able to distinguish between the utility of those tools.”
And while Mars doesn’t interfere with his work at the studio, she makes her presence felt. “She definitely sends out an air of judgment for the number of hours that I have spent, in her mind, staring at a wall. You can sense that she’s judging you, out of immense boredom. She’ll sometimes let out one of those passive-aggressive sighs—Oh my God! We’ve been here for hours on end. Can we please do something else? It’s hard for her to quantify the level of enjoyment I get out of applying a brush to a surface. I can only imagine watching a person watch paint dry for hours.”
Leslie Martinez
Fiona was discovered last summer on Leslie Martinez’s grandparents’ ranch in South Texas, where, before their grandparents died a few years ago, animals found safe haven. “They would feed every animal that came by, like, You eat what we eat,” recalls Martinez, who believes the area’s “charged energy” of animal sanctuary attracted Fiona to it. For months she lived on the back porch under a chair, until Martinez’s parents rescued her. “I wanted a small dog I could travel with and was not in the market for a big dog,” they say. “My parents forced it on me, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Martinez is known for textured, abstract large-scale paintings that incorporate cast-off materials, and when Fiona came into their life, just as they began work on their first New York museum exhibition at MoMA PS1 last year, Martinez admits to being nervous. “I was like, Training a puppy is not what I need right now. But it was absolutely seamless. She doesn’t bother me when I’m working, she’s never ripped something off my paintings. She, mysteriously, magically, is just a good girl.”
The artist—whose work subtly nods to themes of safety, survival, and sustenance—recognizes a more profound connection to Fiona, related to their clan’s deep ties to the Rio Grande Valley. “She comes from the same place I come from—she experienced the same sights and sounds of something that’s very innately spiritual to me,” they say. “There’s this aura of care, a lineage of refuge for animals on that ranch, that really does tie into my work and what I’m thinking about.” When Fiona lived on the ranch, Martinez continues, she confronted threats like rattlesnakes, tarantulas, coyotes, and wild pigs. “We got her to safety. I’m very happy to provide these little moments of comfort for her.”
