Due Soon

collection of the artist
acrylic on masonite

Early Spring in southwestern Ontario is one of my favorite seasons to paint, because it’s so loaded with dualities.  The end of one growing season but not yet advanced enough to really see the start of the new season. Late fall ploughing has erased the mistakes of the season before, and the new one ahead is full of promise.

The cow in the painting is an old one, on her last pregnancy.  Her life cycle is mirrored by the season outside.  If she delivers a female, it will be raised to join the milking herd, and the cycle of life of her family line will continue.

The block and tackle hanging from the ceiling is sometimes used to assist difficult births on dairy farms, but here I intended it to serve as a visual metaphor for the inexorable march of time, pulling us all to an inescapable conclusion.  Raising a family is perhaps one way of leaving something to continue our legacy after we’re gone, but so also are creative acts like painting (something Alex Colville referred to ‘as a kind of an anti-death league’).

Birth, death, the cycle of life as reflected in the movement of the seasons on a dairy farm, and our passage through time. All of this was running through my head when I painted Due Soon.