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.
