Inspiration Can Come From Anywhere “Part 1”

This may become a recurring theme of mine, but I think it is important that non-artists know how the creative process can manifest itself to motivate an artist to generate a particular piece of art.

In this posting, I want to tell the story of how I came to make the project that I call “Beware of Dog”. The original project was done on a 3 foot by 4 foot piece of drywall that I made into a room divider for my office at work, to cut down on the office noise in my work area.

The image that I used on the out facing side of the room divider was inspired by a graffiti image of a crazy looking two legged dog that I saw on a 500 year old wall in the center of the oldest part of Florence, Italy. This dog had been done in bright yellow spray paint on a fine old brick wall. I was very charmed by this crude spray painted image and decided to use a recreation of it on my room divider. I saw the graffiti dog for the first time about 3 ½ years ago and I was very surprised when I returned to Florence this spring and found that the graffiti dog had not been removed or changed in any way. I guess that the Italians feel very differently about graffiti than most folks in America, where we paint over it and discourage people from marking buildings with graffiti.

Since the dog image was on a 500 year old wall, I decided to add Latin phrases to the image because that was the language that was spoken at the time that the wall was erected. The three phrases I chose were “Cave Canem” which means “Beware of Dog”, the second phrase is “Carpe Diem” which means “Seize the Day” and the last phrase, running along under the dog, is “Aut viam inveniam aut facium!” which means “Either I shall find a way, or I shall make one”, that is credited to Hannibal.

The last surface design I added to the “Beware of Dog” image is a set of hand prints in the upper corners that bare runes on the palms of each hand. The runes are part of an ancient Northern writing system that is now considered a dead language.

The materials that I used on the dog panel were textured spray paint to create the background which gave it the look of an outdoor wall and the dog was painted in latex craft paint. The phrases were carved into the drywall to give the affect of graffiti that is carved into trees and the hand prints were covered in copper leaf to give them a shimmering attitude.

Once I had the piece finished, I edged the drywall in wood and put a long flat 4 inch wide board along the top of the piece to use as a brace to attach the room divider to the wall for stability.

Once the piece was mounted, I finished the installation with pieces of big bones, small sculptures and stones. For a quirky touch, I drilled a hole in the end of the bone that hung over the edge of the piece and made a hanging fetch out of a plastic skeleton with some beads and feathers.

Before I installed the room divider, I took photos of the piece so that I could use the image for future projects.

I have posted a photo of the original graffiti dog, the finished panel before installation and a couple of photos of the panel after it was installed in my office.

Prints of "Beware of Dog" are available for purchase. Contact me if you are interested.