The eighteenth and nineteenth century tradition of bovine portraits came to America with English and Germanic settlers and remained in both fine and folk artwork through the twentieth century.  The immortalization of an award-winning bull or cow through a painted portrait was a way to show pride in the abundance of your personal property  –cattle grew strong because of the richness of your land.

Andy Warhol commented on this tradition, transforming the bovine portrait into a wallpaper pattern, acknowledging that society had changed from killing the fatted calf for a special feast to a hamburger shop on every corner, meat for every meal.

However, the bull or cow as a symbol of the “fat of the land” has changed.  It is the raising of cattle that caused the great forests at the heart of America to be razed, the reason the rain forests of Brazil are today being burned.

Meat consumption is a greater component of global warming than automobiles.

It takes ten times more land to sustain a meat-based diet than it does to sustain a vegetable-based diet.   Additionally, a majority of the beef produced in modern, commercial farms is unfit for human consumption.  As a global society, we are finding new and varied ways to poison ourselves and the planet.

One entire pencil was used on this painting  –akin to one tree cut down or burned down for the raising of cattle–  the graphite/charcoal (carbon) of a pencil referencing the American barbeque as well as the carbon footprint produced by the raising/consumption of meat.   Ironically, all life is carbon-based and the production of carbon  –the carbon footprint–  will be the end of all life on this planet.

The image is a milk cow  –a female kept pregnant so she produces milk–  alluding to our actions regarding Mother Earth herself:  a disrespectful, small-minded attitude of self-service and commercialism.

Roy Anthony Shabla

Untitled Painting for Earth Day

2014

6’ x 5’

Paint, Pastel, Pencil, on Canvas

$4000