Commentary

Preoccupied with the technological sophistication of contemporary life, we can forget we are animals. Unless we are hurting, or hungry, or alone we may mistake our identity as being purely human, oblivious that we are creatures who live physically, crave instinctually, and move with animal grace. To regard the life of other mammals is to recognize something profound and potentially unsettling: that we are at once close kin and strangely alienated from other members of this warm-blooded extended family.
           
In her paintings, Peta Kaplan-Sandzer establishes an intimate connection with a wide range of dogs, reminding us that we and they share something beyond membership in a common biological class. Kaplan-Sandzer’s creatures, in their many varieties, are solitary, at times seemingly bereft, yet stoic and steadfast in their individual existence. They are both truly canine, specific in form and posture, and something more, in their capacity to elicit in the viewer an empathic identification. Knowing that all the animals in her Stray Dogs series were encountered by the artist on the streets of Nicaraguan towns deepens our sense that she has made contact with creatures that are derelict and yet whose character as conscious beings are intact.

Deftly depicted in broad fluid strokes, Kaplan-Sandzer’s strays have a real animal vitality despite their tenuous life on the streets. She takes clear satisfaction in capturing their essential doghood, expressed in attitudes signifying searching confusion, lounging oblivion, or abject abandonment. These dogs each inhabit an indeterminate space, particular yet largely empty of defining landmarks. It is a theatrical space where the drama of survival, on both an emotional and material level is being acted out.
           
Kaplan-Sandzer’s paintings in this ongoing series have moved through a number of phases, beginning with a naturalistic approach, rendering the subtle play of light over the canine form, as in the affecting Frontal Stare on Green. In the succeeding phase, the dog’s cast shadow became a significant element, serving as almost a phantom companion to the lone animal. The thinner paint handling of the earlier pieces gave way to more thickly worked canvases, such as the strongly shadowed, undaunted, one-eyed Teddy. The recent strongly abstract works range from almost expressionistic paintings, in which the background becomes an active presence, to elegantly simplified dogs silhouetted against a beach and the horizon line. Kaplan-Sandzer’s dogs, alone and uncared for, are both spirited avatars of existential fortitude, and reminders of our collective responsibility to all living things.

– John Mendelsohn