Give Us This Day

oil on canvas (2005)
59-1/2" x 54"
US$6,000**
"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. "Give Us This Day" is an example.
Any artist is faced with the dilemma of how to say what they want to say. With passion, yes -- but will it be, say, in anger or with love? Personally I've been influenced by the poet Erich Maria Rilke, who believed that the poet's task is to praise. The job turns out to be more difficult than it appears. What is there to praise when what you love is being neglected, destroyed or undermined? A young artist friend once looked at my paintings and, in his view, to express my real feelings I should have painted jagged red X's across some of them. Maybe he's right. Maybe my calf should be an "ex-calf". But I've chosen Rilke's dictum and I'm sticking with it the best I can. One way around the dilemma is to add the dimension of mystery. Life is large, huge, immense. I witness a tiny portion of it. If I can somehow hint at its full richness, then my own experience of it is put into perspective.
The phrase "Give Us This Day" can be taken to imply "Give Us This Day Our Daily Beef" -- in which case the calf will indeed soon be an ex-calf. Alternatively, you can think of "Give Us This Day" being an exhortation to live in the glorious present -- despite the evils on the horizon. Or both at once.
P.S. It's been pointed out that it's a Holstein and they're dairy cows. Well, black and white solved an artistic dilemma.

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

Give Us This Day

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