Nicola Bailey
Between Dog and Wolf / Entre Chien et Loup
Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Images © Nicola Bailey / Everard Read Gallery
By PETRA MASON May 20th, 2026
With all the global art world chaos, it’s both necessary and reassuring to return to the classics. Can human beings ever see into an animal’s mind, or an animal into a human’s? This question that had haunted painters during the Renaissance continues to this day. South African visual artist Nicola Bailey’s solo exhibition Between Dog and Wolf / Entre Chien et Loup foregrounds the hound as a companion species.
Sleeping Spirits Adrift, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm
“I am particularly interested in forms of consciousness in other creatures. Dreaming and conscious emotional states are not exclusive to humans, I would like this inquiry to shift past hierarchical narratives to ideas of equality, intra-dependency and the fact that animals dream too.” Bailey tells me on an autumnal highveld afternoon in Johannesburg. “The opaque and intangible nature of animals dreaming reaffirms our sameness; there is no other,” observes Bailey. “In the act of drawing, Bailey collaborates with her subjects; she reaches the edge of what she has become in the act of observing them,” writes Keely Shinners in the exhibition catalogue.
Light Dreams for Day Sleepers, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 150 x 196 cm
Feminist scholar Donna Haraway examines the notion of ‘significant otherness’ further in her book Companion Species Manifesto “the implosion of nature and culture in the relentlessly historically specific, joint lives of dogs and people, bonded together in significant otherness”. According to Animals and Men, Kenneth Clark’s seminal observations on the topic foregrounding the dog, has long fascinated artists, relishing the absence of self-consciousness a human subject can never overcome. You may wonder why this literary thread? Bookshelves lined with titles on the topic and the artist’s personal collection of animal art by other artists intrigued me on a recent visit to the artists’ new studio in central Cape Town.
Notably, Becoming Animal, by David Abram, Broglio’s Animal Revolution, Nagel’s What is it like to be a bat? Berger’s Ways of Seeing and About Looking, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog and Enlightened Animals in Eighteenth-Century Art published by MCA Denver. All worthy acquisitions for one’s personal library.
Nights Companions, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm
“To have a new studio space adjoining my home means that my four-legged companions and I can collaborate without leaving home, mostly they rest and I work. Situated in Cape Town near Table Mountain there are sparrowhawks and other bird species that visit and find their way into my work.” Bailey elaborates. The best loved dog of the Renaissance is Death of Procris, the subject mourned by a dog who looks at her with human sorrow and gravity. Admired for its ‘hazy atmosphere of a waking dream’ the Piero di Cosimo painting circa 1495 continues to beguile visitors to the National Gallery in London. Bailey’s works echo the waking dream with comforting titles such as ‘Light Dreams for Day Sleepers’, ‘Sleeps Embrace’ and ‘Soft Dreaming’. These are animals at ease, drawn from sketches. The tense, nervous energy of the animals is replaced by dreaming canines. As art imitates life : Nicola Bailey is statuesque, herself at least twice the length of a sleeping Whippet.
Sleeps Embrace, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 196 x 150 cm
On her muses: “Sighthounds have been present in Art History and antiquities from ancient times. I have always shared my life with a whippet or two. They are a very relaxed breed and sleep for 20 hours out of 24 which gives me a lot of time to study and draw them. Working with more than human concerns, in close proximity to canine companions, I explore this gentle entanglement with my non-human significant others.”
On her mentors and ongoing creative projects:
With artist/Educator duo Rosenclaire (Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky) as mentors and the duo’s on-going internationally acclaimed immersive workshops in Tuscany, Italy and Cape Town, South Africa. “There Bailey’s interest in human-animal relationships was not only encouraged but treated as a serious, generative line of enquiry” writes art world luminary Sean O’Toole. Via the “workshoppers” global network; collaboration, encouragement and ongoing creative projects never lose momentum. Nicola Bailey elaborates: “I’ve been fortunate enough to attend workshops with Rosenclaire for almost two decades. They have generously encouraged and mentored my interest in Human/Animal Relationships, both in a contemporary context and through the lens of Art History,”
(My) Familiar Shadow, Bronze on Rose Quartz 91 x 100 x 73.5 cm
Companion Species:
Bailey concludes: “We have co-evolved, cohabiting for millennia; we have shared more than just our homes with “domestic animals”. There is a mysterious and deep emotional bond between human and companion animals, grounded in a reciprocal devotion, radical empathy and care.”
Nicola Bailey
Between Dog and Wolf / Entre Chien et Loup
Now on until June 13 at Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Everard Read Gallery est.1913 is Africa’s oldest commercial art gallery.
