Painting: Selfportrait with Rothko the dog, and the moon wrist watch from Peter Nakada on Dean street, Brooklyn
Torild Stray
Selfportrait with my dog, Rothko and moon watch in Brooklyn
oil on cotton duck
1996
120 × 95 cm
This painting was shown in an exhibition at the Painting Center in SoHo, New York, curated by the art historian and New York–based curator Karen Wilkin. At the time, I wasn’t used to exhibiting my work, and I remember how viewers approached me with very literal interpretations—asking whether the dog in the painting was dead, or if I was about to cut my wrist.
I found their reactions both surprising and amusing.
Later, the dog—Rothko Sherik Stray the First (his full name)—was shot dead upstate by a woman farmer.
