Tessa Greene O’Brien, Stay, oil on linen, 23 x 30 in., 2022.
Stay portrays a type of classical English statuary, a greyhound frozen at attention while guarding a manicured garden. Though the dog is marble-white, matching the podium it lies upon, there are hints that it is, in fact, a living creature and not a statue. Its lips crumple inelegantly, and its eyes and snout are a glossy black. The dog wears a brown leather collar and appears to be straining against a leash.
The dog’s gaze is straight ahead, as if locking eyes with the holder of the leash. Its shoulder muscles are tense and the muscles in its hind legs are taut, digging in. She is engaged in a power struggle with an unseen partner at the other end of the leash.
My dog Izzie is a black mutt, part Pittie and part Lab, but her body is long, lean, and muscular like a statue. She has what a trainer once described as “a strong freedom drive,” which is to say that off-leash, she will just run and run and run. So we walk together, the leash tight between us, negotiating her desire for freedom and my desire to keep her safe and contained. We adore one another; the leash is often slack as well. All of this is not unlike a marriage.
I often think about nature, order, domestication, and wildness. How gardens are idealized versions of nature, curated, reorganized, and re-presented. This seeking of beauty and order is not inherently bad or good; it is just something we do—in ourselves, in our pets, households, gardens, and communities. Taken to extremes it can be disastrous. It is a life’s work to find balance between allowing what is to just be, and choosing what to try to make a little bit better.