Let Sleeping Dogs Lie - New paintings Jan 2012

Ann-Marie Tully, Let sleeping dogs lie - Jessica.
Oil on fabriano, 35 x 50cm

Ann-Marie Tully, Let sleeping dogs lie - Frieda.
Oil on fabriano, 35 x 50cm

Let sleeping dogs lie (series)

The idea for the Let sleeping dogs lie series stems from a current body of work that investigates the temporality of animal life in relation to human/animal relationships and loss. The agency of animal beings is asserted in these works that concentrate on the particularity of individual creatures, and human perspectives. The titles of these works ironically reference well known colloquial expressions that involve the metaphoric and metonymic subsumption of animal characteristics in communicating human experience and emotion. Although these anthropocentric colloquialisms often prove to be apt communications, such expressions tend to reduce the particularity of animal beings in a colonising humanist gesture.