The Young Bull In My Barn

2022  31.75 x 42.75in  acrylic on masonite

When most people think of a bull, a certain set of attributes generally emerges in their assessment. Strong, powerful, immoveable, stubborn, physical, and perhaps even dangerous.  In this painting, I wanted to challenge these assumptions and in so doing, challenge the viewer’s preconceptions.

      Here I have portrayed the bull as a young animal, having not yet grown into the muscular stature of an adult bull. Alone and in the dark recesses of his pen in the barn, he confronts us with his vulnerability, forcing us to come to terms with what is going on. He is trying to communicate something to us, but we cannot understand what the scribblings he’s made with his horns on the walls means, and his voice is silenced by being cut off at the mouth in the composition.  An animal we all assume to be strong is rendered mute and vulnerable by the trauma it has experienced, unable to express itself for fear of exacerbating the situation it finds itself in.  Stifling the terror for fear crying out will only make it worse.  

     I do feel that non-human animals are capable of feeling anxiety, bewilderment, and fear, and it was a goal of mine to minimize this in every animal I looked after as a farmer.  In a broader context, this young bull (at least for me) could equally represent a terrified family huddled in a bombed-out apartment in the Ukraine or Syria, or a 4-year-old child alone in his bedroom at night, hearing his father’s footsteps thundering up the stairs.

     All are victims of wars they did not want to be in, and the survivors will carry the emotional scars of their own terror at the hands of bullies for the rest of their lives.