BECCA BARRON
ARTIST

Becca’s practice highlights people’s desire to humanise dogs, critiquing codes of behaviour, in how humans interact with pets. Through paint, she explores how people’s inner thoughts and feelings are projected onto their pets, using costume, showing how they are treated like babies or consumer items by being dressed up. The personification of the domestic dog can be emphasised with the power humans have, to give them any identity they choose, often a reflection of tastes, values and status. The humanisation of dogs through clothing is intended to be appreciated ironically through humour and excessive sentimentality. The settings explore domestic spaces, giving the viewer a further insight into the absent owner.
 

Her work is inspired by artists Lydia Blakeley and David Hockney’s ‘Dog Days’ series, along with the photographs of people's pets she is frequently sent, when doing coloured pencil commissions alongside her practice.
 

Overtime, domestication of dogs has resulted in their facial features being enhanced, resembling those of a baby. Many believe this triggers a parental release, as cuteness often relates to aesthetic childish traits. Instagram acts as a platform to ‘show off’ people’s beloved animals, some treating them as lifestyle accessories. Notions of kitsch art and cuteness are influential to her practice. Her paintings have a kitschy contemporaneity to them, a real subversion of traditional pet portraits.