The Stories Behind Why Artists Paint Dogs

At Arts to Hearts Project, we know that behind every subject an artist chooses there is a reason. And behind every reason there is a story. Dogs, as it turns out, come with some of the best ones.

101 Art Book: Dog Edition is a curated international collection celebrating dogs through the eyes of over 100 contemporary artists from around the world. Not as subjects. As presences. As companions, as memories, as emotional anchors, as the thing in a life that made everything a little more bearable.

Across painting, photography, textiles, mixed media, and visual storytelling, this book captures what most of us have felt about dogs but rarely found the right words for.

We asked the featured artists one question. Why did you choose to paint a dog? And the answers that came back were more honest and more personal than we anticipated. Childhood companions. Beloved dogs lost too soon.

Service animals who deserved to be honoured. Strays who locked eyes with a lens for just long enough. Every answer completely different. Every answer pointing back to the same truth. That a dog is never just a dog. That the connection runs deeper than most people admit out loud.

We shared some of those answers. And then more came in that felt just as worth sharing. So here we are again. Because some stories are simply too good to leave behind.

One dog in a fog. One dog in the studio. Two very good reasons to keep painting.

Some paintings begin with a plan. A considered decision about subject and composition and what the work is trying to say. And then there are the ones that begin with a photograph that stops you mid-scroll. Where the light is doing something and the atmosphere is doing something and there is a dog in the middle of all of it and suddenly the only thought in your head is that this has to become a painting. No deliberation. No second-guessing. Just an immediate and completely certain knowing.

Joseph Harrold @joeharroldfineart describes it this way:

“I saw a photo of my brother-in-law’s retriever, the light and the fog, and I immediately thought I have to paint this image. I have a six month old Springer Spaniel, Axel, who I have had since he was about three months old. He is the greatest addition to my studio and I couldn’t ask for a better mix of love and chaos.”

Joseph Harrold

Love and chaos. That is what Axel brings to the studio every single day. And we suspect that kind of company changes the work in ways that are hard to quantify but impossible to ignore. One dog appeared in a foggy photograph and demanded to be painted. Another one moved in and never left. Joseph did not go looking for either of them. They just arrived. And now both of them are part of the practice.

Angus is gone. The drawing makes sure he is never forgotten.

Losing a dog leaves a kind of quiet in a house that nothing else quite fills. The routines you keep out of habit. The corner of the sofa that nobody sits in. The way you still listen for sounds that are no longer there. And the photographs that suddenly mean more than they ever did before because they are all you have left of something irreplaceable.

John Havemann @sketcher28 turned that into a drawing:

“The pastel drawing that I have in the book is from a photograph that I took of my dog, Angus, who I lost to old age in 2021. He is one of many dogs who have been in my life, but one that will never be forgotten. The title ‘Where you still rest’ is in respect to him and the place the rests are in my heart.”

John Havemann

We keep coming back to that title. Where you still rest. Not where you rested. Still. Present tense. Because Angus did not go somewhere final. He went somewhere inside John that grief cannot reach. And the drawing is just the proof of that. Made from a photograph taken before anyone knew it would one day be the last one. That is the thing about losing a dog. You never know which photograph is going to matter most until it is the only new one you will ever have.

Some people move through the world collecting dog encounters. This is one of those people.

Most of us remember the dogs we have loved. The ones who lived with us. The ones who were ours. But there is a certain kind of person who remembers every dog they have ever met. The names, the personalities, the particular way each one existed in the world. Who can tell you about a dog they crossed paths with fifteen years ago with the same clarity as a dog they met last week. Those people are not dog lovers in the ordinary sense. They are something closer to students of dogs. Paying attention in a way most people simply do not.

Joy Francis @thejoy_of_creatingthings is one of them:

“I chose to make a dog sculpture to show how much I appreciate my own dog and her caring nature. I have had many encounters with all different kinds of dogs throughout my life and they are all memorable. I manage to remember dogs names better than their owners, as they are such great little characters, all in their own way.”

Joy Francis

She remembers the dogs better than the owners. Of course she does. Because for Joy every dog is a character. Distinct, memorable, entirely their own. And her own dog, the one whose caring nature moved her enough to make a sculpture, is simply the most recent in a lifetime of dogs who left their mark. The sculpture is appreciation made physical. And we think that is a completely valid reason to make anything.

The job is not just to draw the dog. It is to draw what makes that dog irreplaceable.

Every dog looks like a dog. But every dog is also completely, entirely, unmistakably themselves. The tilt of the head. The particular way they look at you. The energy that comes through even in a still image. And when someone commissions a portrait of their dog they are not asking for an accurate rendering of an animal. They are asking someone to see what they see. To capture the thing that makes their dog different from every other dog in the world. That is a much harder and much more important task.

In Kaiya Curry’s @KaiyaCurryFineArt own words:

“I chose to draw dogs to bring the joy each pet gives their human to the paper. Each commission welcomes the viewer to get to know the dog’s personality and adorableness.”

Kaiya Curry

Get to know the dog. That is the phrase that matters. Because Kaiya is not producing portraits. She is producing introductions. Each drawing an invitation for whoever looks at it to understand something real about that specific dog. The personality. The joy. The particular adorableness that the owner sees every single day and desperately wants someone else to see too. And when that works, when the drawing captures not just what the dog looks like but who the dog is, that is when a commission becomes something worth keeping forever.

Anxiety at midnight. A dog that noticed. Some comforts arrive without being summoned.

There are moments in life when fear arrives in the middle of the night and there is nothing to do but lie with it. No distraction strong enough. No logic that helps. Just the dark and the weight of something you cannot control and the hours between now and when it will all begin. Those are the moments you remember. Not always for the fear. Sometimes for what showed up alongside it.

Saskia Overath @saskia.overath has one of those memories:

“I chose a dog as my subject because it symbolizes loyalty, a loyalty that is very strong, but which, in this instance, must nevertheless be broken. I love dogs and have a lot of dog encounters luckily. One that has stayed with me was a moment in my life, when I was scared of a surgery I was about to have the next day. In the middle of the night I woke up with strong anxiety, feeling awful. My mother’s dog noticed this and snuggled up to me, even though she usually sleeps soundly at night. Once I was feeling better, she went back to her favourite spot to sleep.”

Saskia Overath

Nobody called her. Nobody woke her up. She just knew. And she came. And she stayed until it was over. And then she went back to sleep like nothing had happened. Because for her nothing had. She had just done what felt obvious. What any dog who loves you would do in the dark when the fear is too loud and the night is too long. Saskia did not forget that. And we think once you have been on the receiving end of that kind of quiet loyalty, you never really do.

What we noticed reading through all of these was not just how much these artists love dogs. It was how specifically they love them.

Not dogs in general. A retriever in a fog that had to be painted immediately. A Spaniel named Axel who brings love and chaos to the studio every day. Angus, who still rests in the heart. A mother’s dog who got up in the middle of the night and went back to sleep the moment she was no longer needed. A lifetime of dog names remembered long after everything else has faded. Every story entirely its own. And every one of them pointing back to the same truth. That a dog is never just a subject. It is always a relationship. Always something personal. Always something that found its way onto the canvas because it could not stay contained anywhere else.

That is what 101 Art Book: Dog Edition was built to hold. And if these stories stayed with you the way they stayed with us, the book is at the link below.

One more thing before you go. 101 Art Book: Texture Edition is now open for submissions. A curated international collection dedicated entirely to artists who work with surface, material, and tactile depth. The kind of work that makes you want to reach out and touch it. If texture is at the heart of your practice, this is exactly where your work belongs. Do not miss it.