John Laub’s family remembers Dickie Dog, the artist's pet, as a small canine with a big personality. Here, Dickie Dog trots along the Fire Island boardwalk and barks. His round brown eyes look up and confront the viewer, who is positioned as the unseen figure the dog encounters. Laub renders the scene from above, depicting the weathered boardwalk in luminous stripes of rose, orange, green, and purple, celebrating the joy of verdant nature with a faithful friend.
Born and trained in Philadelphia, Laub was an openly gay man whose career intersected with the AIDS crisis. Through the 1980s, he volunteered his design skills to many direct-service organizations, making posters and graphic ephemera. Laub earned his BFA in graphic design from the Philadelphia College of Art (later the University of the Arts), then studying filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Ultimately choosing painting, he exhibited at Philadelphia galleries including A. J. Wood and Gross McCleaf before relocating to New York in 1984. Laub was deeply involved with the Fire Island Pines Art Project, serving on its board of directors and co-chairing its annual group exhibition, The Art Show. He taught summer painting classes from his Fire Island Pines home for a decade.
