Xoloitzcuintli: En La Vida y En La Muerte (Guide Us)

Mariana Moreno-Gonzalez is a first generation Mexican-American and Bay Area native who is a passionate portrait artist that specializes in memorializing pet companions. She began experimenting with acrylic paint in high school, but decided to focus her creativity in studying Fashion Design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. After graduating in 2012, she felt that her creativity was exhausted, and found a special puppy she named Lobo. She loved him very much and was dedicated to taking good care of him. Lobo suffered from anxiety and was quite reactive. She worked in retail to be flexible in keeping up with his training and care. In January of 2021, Lobo got very sick and within two weeks, she found out she was losing him to cancer. The grief of losing her special companion and the deep bond they had developed over the years brought Mariana back to art. She repaired her relationship with art and began painting him as her form of grief therapy. She shared her journey and final piece with her family and friends. Since then, Mariana has been connecting with new stories and honoring more of these special relationships between guardians and their pet companions. She also shares her insights that she learned from her time with Lobo in her personal collection of paintings that she calls her “visual diaries”, which she has been developing each year since his passing.