Dog That Swallowed a Bee

Acrylic on canvas, 2025

16 x 12 inches

I was inspired by Renaissance paintings in which animals appear distorted and disproportionate. Despite advancements in human anatomy, painters of the time lacked knowledge of animal anatomy, often because they had never seen an animal of that kind.

Today, our understanding of animal anatomy has improved significantly, and we can accurately depict animals, but we still find a lot of entertainment in odd-looking, disproportionate cats and dogs— videos of pets looking funny or doing funny things are all over the Internet.

In my piece, I wanted to demonstrate that disfigured-looking pets remain a major part of human entertainment, albeit in the form of memes. Pets are still integral to many people’s lives (including mine), even if they are silly or odd-looking!