When artist Mark Barone and his wife Marina lost their beloved dog Santina at the age of 21 years, Marina (very much a cat person prior!) went on line to adopt another dog. What she found instead was the brutal reality of the number of dogs that are dumped and destroyed every day in shelters. When she and Mark saw the graphic evidence they decided to do something about it.
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Within just two days, Mark had come to a decision on how he was going to help these dogs by raising awareness:
“He was going to paint the approximate number of dogs killed each day in shelters to illustrate the stark reality of our inhumane animal parenting and sheltering and to help us come together for compassionate solutions.”
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Why Art?
“Art speaks to the heart and has the power to cut through to our conscience,” Mark told iHeartDogs.com “I have never painted something pretty for people’s walls. My art has always dealt with the struggles of the human condition and issues that people want to avoid dealing with. I took on this project because I was intimately connected to the love of dogs and how they helped me in my own redemption, and could not turn away once I had witnessed the suffering and destruction of millions of shelter animals. There is a reciprocal relationship between the paintings and the viewer and my intent is to stir the conscience and invoke empathy and challenge them to take responsibility for the conditions we have all created.”
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So Barone spent the next four years – 1400 days straight – painting 5,500 paintings to represent the number of dogs killed each day in shelters across America.
EVERY SINGLE ONE IS A PORTRAIT OF A REAL DOG.
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“All 5500 have passed and were primarily given to us by rescues and volunteers who could not save them and wanted them to be remembered,” Mark said.
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“Painting 5500 was a way of putting faces to a forgotten number and show reverence for those needlessly lost souls. I knew I had to paint something large enough that it could not be ignored and would garner enough media attention to put the issue into the spotlight and raise awareness across the nation to inspire change.”
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The Museum Of Compassion
The end goal is the Museum of Compassion – a permanent home for these piece of art as a reminder of what we, as Americans, need to fix.
“Marina and I discovered that there was so little support going to the rescues and those on the frontlines, so we wanted to use the images to create beautiful products as a way to fund their freedom and create a Museum of Compassion to educate and revolutionize animal welfare,” Mark said.
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To fund the project, they are taking donations on their website, where you can learn about the lost dogs who have been immortalized through Barone’s work.
“We hope to get the support from other philanthropists who are in a position to help us get the Museum up and open, or it will take us much longer to do it by ourselves,” Mark said.
The plan is to choose a location in New Mexico, but that is undecided at this point.
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You can also shop on the An Act of Dog website for night lights and Giclée prints.
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100 percent of the proceeds goes to 100 rescue organizations from all 50 states and shipping is free within the U.S. These would make an amazing gift for any animal advocate this holiday season. http://anactofdog.org/collections/shop-products
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Toledo, United States.