Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bull

40.5x25.5in
acrylic on masonite

When I was a dairy farmer, I’d often see young bulls scratching their horns on the plastered pen walls. It didn’t seem to me that these 800lb young males were doing this because their horns were itchy. Rather, they seemed to enjoy the rhythmic rubbing up and down against a surface that yielded to their increasing bulk by flaking off chunks of whitewash, as they tested their ever- growing strength. Eventually, the constant repetition of the same movement scratched a design as the plywood grain showed through the plaster. As the plywood seam cut the impression in the middle, it struck me as a sort of abstract painting of reeds in water, and brought to mind the question of what constitutes ‘art’. There was a lot I saw in myself watching these bulls try and amuse themselves beyond the monotony of daily life, and the painting is about confinement, boredom, and routine, pitted against an internal desire to create.