Page 126 - Vegan Life - Issue 59 (February 2020)

I have always absorbed the sights
more than a ‘thank you’ — ater all, we over from Toronto to give a lecture. She
were complete strangers. She immediately
posted the image on social media, and the
response from thousands of people was out the images that I find unbearable
astounding. Once more, my life changed to look at, but that still have a certain
overnight, and I had to ‘face the truth’
again — I was beholden to combine my art
skills, my ethics and my priveleged access
to information and images at my job, and
become an activist for animals. It seems
inevitable now, but I really had no idea
that my life would take this turn. I'm so
grateful that it has — it elevated me into a
whole new world of ‘active art’. And, as a
bonus, I’ve become good friends with horrible photograph into something new,
Jo-Anne and actually spent an evening something that a viewer can engage with
with her in Bristol in 2018, when she came
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and sounds of the everyday world around
me and reproduced them in an eclectic
mixture on the canvas and page, but in
recent years, I have begun to realise that
there are some deeply rooted influences
that govern all my creative output. I adore
the theatre and its symbolism, opulence
and intense sense of heightened drama,
and, at the other end of the scale, I’m
lucky to have grown up in the beautiful
surroundings of the Malvern Hills, where
I was surrounded by nature and ate
produce from my dad’s allotment. The
sense of the interconnectedness of all
things was palpable. I innately knew that
the soil and the weather fed the fruit and
vegetables that we grew and harvested, in
the same way that the experience of the
natural world outside fed my inner world
of creativity.
I hope that my more uncompromising
work gives the viewer a chance to
empathise with the forgotten and abused
animals I choose to portray, and also
that this quiet connection leads to some
internal change of heart and conscience.
I want to be challenging, but at the same
time it's very important to intrigue and
educate. I never forget that these animals
are my unwilling subjects, and I want to
memorialise each individual with dignity,
respect and pity. Mostly, I put myself
in the place of the audience, and allow
myself to feel strong emotion without
intellectualising it too much. Then, I get
on and paint, and trust I’ve done the right
thing. At least that way I can take all the
credit or all the blame!
For five years I’ve focused on factory
farming, as well as trying some allegorical
imagery of human babies in place of
dairy calves. I’ve also painted a series of
determinedly melancholy and symbolic
portraits of the cows that I photographed
bought me a pizza — result! from the back window of my house.
With my factory farming work, I seek I live in farming country in Somerset,
and these particular cows were all recently
taken away. For me, these last portraits
aesthetic and emotional quality. I then have more gravitas and personal sorrow
reproduce them in acrylic paint as in them than any of my work, and I think
realistically as possible. In doing so, it shows.
I naturally filter the reality of it through Now, I’m trying to move beyond those
my own personal technique, and the appalling images and ‘break out’ into
result is a hybrid of brutal realism and the world of conventional art by painting
my own innate feelings. The artist work that is still animal-related, but is
always reveals a little of themselves in celebratory, exuberant and fantastical.
their work, and this is what changes a I won’t ever hide my ‘controversial’ work,
but it may be an efective (and non-
preachy) approach to gain an audience
on a completely diferent level. that likes this newer work, and who then ›