A Little Bull (and Roo)

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Detail, from a canvas in the Dionysia series.  Suzanne Edminster

I love cows.  I saw far more cows than people before I started going to kindergarten.  I find peace and soul in the feeling of that huge rectangular wall of living flesh breathing in a green or yellow field.

In this painting, the bright colors of pink/orange spatter are not applied last, but first.  I sanded down after overpainting them with opaque paint to reveal them underneath, like arteries.  In every domestic cow there’s a ancient auroch underneath.

I like like digging up the old layers, revealing the hidden veins: it’s my own version of the X-ray style of aboriginal art.   I find cows make a good imaginary canvases.  All that warm action lies just under a vast surface area.

Ancêtre totémique kangourou - Kunwinjku - Musée du quai Branly, Paris
Australian, unknown artist.

What animal wanders around your dream fields?