Dogs of Ladbroke Grove
“The Dogsibition began as an idea I had to bring the community together at my local pub, as well as raise funds for The Mayhew, an animal welfare charity. It’s a very friendly pub, but there had recently been a stabbing outside and threatening behaviour towards the bar staff that led to the manager leaving to protect his family.
The new manager had been asking for ideas for events, so the original vision was to create an atmosphere that would be sociable and fun - I sort of imagined all the owners and their dogs coming to the private view, although that may have been a terrible idea! (I also had never seen myself as a pet portraitist due to inbuilt artist snobbery.)
After Christmas and New Year I still had been sent only one dog photo, but I extended the deadline and eventually had 18 to paint in a month. One particular dog (appropriately named Onions) caused me a lot of grief. I must have painted him 6 times as his portrait varied on a scale somewhere between spawn of satan and a koala bear. Got there in the end though.
The private view was in the week leading up to complete lockdown, and we had 8 guests and 1 dog in attendance. (3 people and 1 dog not very well behaved either). We sold one painting that night to the owner of a dog called Biscuit (Biscuit the dog, not the owner) who is an NHS worker and was so pleased to come to something happy that week. That, if anything, made all of the work worth it!
The day after the preview, the pub shut down and I kept thinking about how sad it was that all the pictures would never be seen... however, we made friends with a guy called T who lives above the pub and is caretaker for it at the moment. He said he’d been spending afternoons in the exhibition space, staring at the pictures and enjoying them. We had seen him one afternoon on the roof of the pub from our garden and arranged to have a distanced coffee on the Sunday. We were going to leave for church online but then he said he’d like to watch it too, so we ended up outside the pub, phone propped up on his car boot, watching church all together. He loved it - and Joey Ellis’ performance especially. He kept saying- “I’m Jeff!”
One day I was on my way home and walked past the pub. The shutters were up and I suddenly thought - why don’t we put the paintings in the windows? I’m a bit annoyed at myself that I didn’t think of it before, but I contacted the manager who said to go for it. T let us in and we brought the exhibition out of lockdown.
We’ve sold a couple more since, and it’s so nice to walk past and people are stopping, smiling, taking photos, and talking to each other for a bit while standing there. It’s not how I ever thought it would look, but it’s certainly everything I wanted it to be!”
- Sarah Jones Keyworth, Artist of the Dogsibition
This is Onions!