Food

Dilemma was the working title. This is going to be about the dilemma of deciding to be a vegetarian. There are so many questions that go along with this decision in terms of whether or not it's worth it or healthy. Does it make any difference? If not some kind of physical difference, does it make a difference in swaying social consciousness? Should I even being trying to sway it? Is it self-righteous? Is it judgmental? Who am I to question what people have been eating for thousands of years?

But at the same time, there is so much wrong with how we eat. As a conflicted vegetarian, I am certainly included in that group. And I certainly don't have a viable worldwide solution for what is wrong. But I really have trouble looking at a peaceful animal like this one in the painting, who eats and sleeps, lives and breathes and cares for its young and not feel somewhat connected.

Blahhhh. I just don't know. I'm stupid. Gonna keep not eatin' meat.

Here's ongoing process:







I think this is just going to be named Dilemma.




I was having trouble with the composition. I'm thinking about how there are two sides to this issue. I am swayed more towards one, but I can also see both sides. And I feel like there is lost information on both sides of the issue. Kinda like the thing where you close your eyes, but you can still see the shapes of the last thing you were looking at. So, I felt that each side of the painting needed to have remnants of the cow where the image was shifted up or down. That's where I am now.

March 14th
I renamed this! It's now called "Food." The color palette is beginning to have a mostly fresh, idyllic feel; however, the composition has a little bit of violent shifting and fragmentation. Some of the twigs in the original resemble claw marks a little. I am enjoying the contrast of a serene field setting with the idea of the kind violence that goes along with simple day to day nourishment – food. Plant life and green colors (a color that very often symbolizes life) are weaving in and out of the cow shape slicing through it body in a violent but pleasant way which, to me, represents the dilemma of what we eat. Because even if you look at eating meat in the way where everything is connected, it's not an awful idea. Eventually we all become food. We give ourselves back to the earth from which we have taken so much (too much these days). Hmm. Strange ideas, but also really basic ideas about life and living. I think the painting is trying to express that idea too. Life is violent and beautiful. In a way this painting has made me feel more comfortable with being a vegetarian, while at the same time feeling very comfortable with people who choose not to be vegetarians.