Secret Dog, Private Dock
Toby Leon
100% digital paper
Original Print, 60.96 x 81.28 x 0.25 cm
Limited Edition of 50
Toby Leon
Return Policy
15 days money back guarantee
Return Policy Terms
• You're welcome to return or exchange any items in your order — open a return request within 7 days of delivery • All returned items must be delivered back to us within 15 days of delivery in their original condition • Please don’t send anything back before submitting a return request • Feel free to send back your items after we have reviewed and approved your return request • After we receive your returned items, we will notify you that we're satisfied with the condition of the returned item(s) • After we approve your return, you will be refunded via your original payment method within 1-2 weeks — includes processing time between our bank and yours
About Toby Leon
We imagine history into existence every day. Shaping the world around us as we go. And I remake histories with every piece. From a motley crew of tales tall and true. A melange of myths, signs and symbols. Every one ripe for my kitsch confections, which could all be legends one day...
Every piece I create is true. Sourced from truth and grounded by it. But never real. Reality's a fiction we're all subscribed to, which doesn't make it any less true. And that's the thing about the truth. Or the past. It moves in both directions. Myriad, in fact. Never sitting still or doing as it's told. Forever questioned, dissected, reframed and upended. Queered and inverted. Packaged and performed. Told, retold, adapted then sold. Evolving, like everything else. Which is why I like to think my art exists outside of time. Reaching for infinity. Not reality. A kaleidoscope of mish-mashed truths, which are only as surreal as we choose to make them...
Toby LeonAbout the Product
In the heart of this piece, we find a reimagined Hercules, a symbol of strength and bravery, in a state of casual repose. His muscular form, bathed in the soft glow of dawn, exudes a sense of effortless confidence. This is not the Hercules of old, embroiled in relentless labour; this is a Hercules who has found peace, a Hercules who has reclaimed his dignity and purpose after emerging from his personal underworld. Finding new kinds of strength and bravery en route.
At his feet sits Cerberus, the three-headed beast known in mythology as the guardian of the underworld. Traditionally, Cerberus was a symbol of fear and death, preventing the dead from leaving the underworld. Here, Cerberus is reimagined as a faithful companion. Speaking to the irony of rebirth with his 3 heads fixed on the past, the present, and the future. Impossible to separate, no matter how fast we run from man’s best friend.
In overcoming the trials of our personal underworlds, we often find ourselves running away from the very chaos that forged our evolution, the very chaos that made this new version of ourselves possible in the first place, whether we were ready for the change or not. Yet, it is only by acknowledging and embracing these trials that we truly find freedom from them. And the private dock, connecting the safety of home with a wide open sea of possibility, serves as a metaphor for this liminal space of transformation. Of evolution through acceptance. Of finding wholeness in between. It is here, in this moment of quiet reflection, that we find the freedom to become our best selves. Leaving you to the quiet reflection of nothing much, just for a moment, while you wait to ride off anywhere but here…