National Dog Day!

Today is National Dog Day— a day to laud + pamper our loyal four-legged companions. To mark this day, we chose a work by hound-loving Mississippi native William Dunlap.

“Dogs have run rampant through my life, as they have with many of you, and over the years have forced their way into my art,” wrote Dunlap. “When Morris Museum director Kevin Grogan approached me about this exhibition [on display in 2006], our conversations turned on a common theme he’d observed in my work—the use of animals in general, and dogs in particular, as substitutes, stand-ins, and visual metaphors for an often absent human presence.”

Image: William Dunlap, “What Dogs Dream: The Ultimate, Eternal, Endless Hunt”, 2005. Oil, graphite, and dry pigment on rag paper. Gift of John C. Harbert, MD. Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia.