ON COWS
They are a part of the landscape.
There has always been milk on the table, a thick cup with a beak, then a glass, a milkshake with a straw, then milky tea, and coffee cream. Even Irish cream.
Hot milk with honey helps me sleep. Especially knowing veal calves are wrenched from their mothers, confined in small plastic houses for their short lives. About twenty weeks. Cruelty keeps me awake. A condundrum.
I paint a child’s idea of cows. Sleek and content and well fed. You don’t see old cows except as hamburger. I don’t want to think of that. I will need more hot milk and honey to sleep, thus perpetuating the cycle.
I meant only to talk about painting the essential shapes of cows at the periphery, yet somehow at the centre. Holy in fields, solid and placid. Quick to alarm. They must know. They must sense that their elders are gone.
They don’t know the human six year olds at breakfast tables, happily reading their cereal boxes. They don’t know that the bowls are filled with their mother’s milk.
THEN THERE ARE DOGS…
I am always keen to meet dogs, learn their names, guess their breeding, talk to them. Talking to a dog feels like communicating with every dog. With dog. Especially my own whom I miss. I take their pictures if they let me. The labs and retrievers are reluctant to look into the camera..doodles and terriers sight you head on. I try to remember their names. If you see your dog here on my page, please tell me the name and something about him/her. Dog portraits