Child with Six Aunts

oil on canvas (1995)
46" x 48"
US$3,300***
"For much of their history and all of prehistory, humans did not see themselves as any different from the other animals among which they lived. Hunter-gatherers saw their prey as equals, if not superiors, and animals were worshipped as divinities in many traditional cultures. The humanist sense of a gulf between ourselves and other animals is an aberration. It is the animist feeling of belonging with the rest of nature that is normal. Feeble as it may be today, the feeling of sharing a common destiny with other living things is embedded in the human psyche. Those who struggle to conserve what is left of the environment are moved by the love of living things, biophilia, the frail bond of feeling that ties humankind to the Earth."

John Gray in Straw Dogs
In the disturbing book by John Gray, this paragraph seemed to leap out at me. It helped to explain why, increasingly, animals are creeping into my thoughts, my home and occasionally my paintings. For sure, the degradation of the environment has been on my mind. As the environment goes, so goes animal life, including my own. So, I have found it interesting that, most recently, animals seem to want to be included in my work. The dogs in the background of "Child with Six aunts" are an example.

*** soon to be available from Art-Exchange in the U.S. (Merike Lugus entry therein)

The 'Child with Six Aunts' was chosen for the July page of the 1997 Big Sister Lottery Calendar, distributed across Canada.