Splat Daisies
McBride / Dillman, April 10 - May 10, 2026, New York, NY.
Splat Daisies
Splat is a cartoon word. It is Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff. It’s a grand piano falling on an unsuspecting character below. Splat! But there is no real pain. It’s played for humor. How unlucky. How stupid. How ridiculous. And everyone is fine. The cartoon ends and a new one begins. Such is life - life happens - and life continues.
The spaces in these paintings borrow from cartoon worlds. Within them is a dream space, a garden where scale, time, and color have fewer rules. I didn’t know what I was painting about at first, and I let myself grope blindly around this garden. Then imagined things started creeping in. Animals would disappear and reappear, a figure would show up, and then inevitably my dog, Pepper, came into the scenes. I should have expected that, whenever I’d look around and couldn’t see my dog, it was because she was standing right beside me.
Pepper had died right when I was beginning this series. She had been ill for almost a year so I knew she was leaving; I had been mourning the entire time. Dogs, pets, animals, play a remarkable role in life. If you’ve ever had a close relationship with one, it’s like you communicate psychically; you read each other's emotions and anticipate each other's needs. You protect each other. It is pure and honest.
This garden is for her, for her ashes, for her memory, for her to bathe in the sun. It is also for you, to heal your heart, to escape, to explore your own imagination. Life is complicated, we get smushed by a grand piano and have to wake up the next day and do it all over again. But it’s also full of fun and beauty and if we are lucky, a very special dog.
Sarah Alice Moran
