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Beast Dead - Sketch 2014 Acrylic on pape
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I try to make sense in pictures of what most often
eludes us in our interactions with other animals.
"We need animals. Animals don't need us, but we need them.
We constantly look for any kind of connection
we can possibly get to them."
Britta Jaschinski (photographer)
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| Beast Dead I 2014 Acrylic on paper |
We are lulled and
comforted by the false assumptions we make about our dominion, and an equally
false idea of “their” cooperation, so we seldom recognise that the anxiety in
the relationship comes from both sides.
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| Draping The Horse II 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Strangers Of Commanding Aspect 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled (Landscape) 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on paper |
An aspect of my
current practice has been to find ways to represent non-human animals while
keeping the meaning with them. (Art) Historically we accept that, more often
than not, the animal depicted is not actually the work’s subject.
In many of my new
works the idea of human refinement has been my starting point. Our refinements
of skills and taste… in what we eat and wear, and in how we live… is what
reassures us of our difference. We are elegant, urbane and worldly wise. Our
sophistication is the crowbar between us that usually prevents a sympathetic
and intelligent engagement with animals and animal-ness.
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
My Beast mostly avoids a familiar form since it’s not fur or smell, but the particular
intimacy of mutual need I wish to capture.
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| Beast Dead II 2014 Acrylic on paper |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Untitled 2014 Acrylic on panel |
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| Beast Dead III 2014 Acrylic on paper |
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| Sketch 2014 Acrylic on paper |
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| Dog in Water 2014 Acrylic on paper |
I've found few visual artists who’ve manage to capture this particular emotional complexity, but someone I do look to in this respect is the photographer, Britta Jaschinski, who photographs animals in zoos.
In his book The Postmodern Animal (2000, Reaktion Books), Steve Baker quotes her as saying:
"We need animals. Animals don't need us, but we need them. We constantly look for any kind of connection we can possibly get to them."
It’s a viewpoint that chimes for me because it acknowledges the anxiety I sense. I identify too with her focus away from – though close to - the physical detail, meaning that the animal photographed is often absent from the image or barely decipherable.
