Good Dog

Neo-expressionist figurative painting / contemporary folk surrealism · October 3, 2026

That creature looks like it has never once passed a temperament test.

A rider sits almost casually atop an enormous spotted beast with red eyes, exposed teeth and the general disposition of an unpaid parking ticket. The mismatch is what makes the painting work: the animal is all teeth, claws and momentum; the figure above it seems strangely composed.

That tension has roots in Bill Traylor, whose simplified people and animals could turn a few blunt shapes into whole psychological dramas. Rose Wylie comes to mind in the deliberately awkward scale, flattened space and wonderfully unfussy brushwork—painting that refuses to straighten its tie for company. And there’s something of Basquiat’s visual rhythm in the black, red and raw mark-making, where repetition feels closer to language than decoration.

The pink ground is crucial. Against a realistic landscape this animal might become illustration. Here, the flat field removes every clue about where we are, leaving rider and beast suspended like a fable someone forgot to finish.

Then come the patterns: black marks on the rider, red marks on the animal. They visually bind the two bodies together while keeping them distinct. Man and creature become a strange paired system—control, companionship, danger, instinct. Pick your interpretation carefully. He has teeth.

Maybe the most unsettling thing here is that the rider appears to know exactly what he’s doing.

FUN FACT

Bill Traylor began making the drawings for which he became famous when he was already in his eighties, creating hundreds of images from simple figures, animals and remembered scenes.