The meaning of life, art and most everything - Oil on canvas - 20in x 28.5 in -2011
Considering this domesticated cow, almost comparable to a slave. Its' life circumscribed and delimited firstly by the farmer and his available pastures or barnyard and with the likely hood of the cow eventually having its life expropriated by the agro-bio industrial complex, to become possibly part of someones backyard barbecue.
So what is it to make of life? It is wise enough to discern that to discover this answer, it's means to know of this insight, is to explore its world. To be curious enough seek and to meet the stranger half way to the other. With a sense of wonder it juts out its snout and with its formidable sense of smell it seeks to discover and meet me/you -this stranger. For it is there, in the meeting of the other that meaning is to be found,in our relationship to life.
The cow and its sense of discovery, is but an allegory for the questions posed in this years Charlatan ink art prize 2011 theme. And it's there, in allegory that we are brought full circle to art. For it is in this suspension of reality, in exploring allegory and another paradigm of knowing reality that we discover meaning within our own paradigm of life. Just as play, sports, and humour are all founded on our capacity to suspend reality for a temporary and voluntary exploration of another paradigm of knowing, so this allegory's suspension of reality is the ground of all art. Ultimately it isn't so much the meaning that we discover, but that we actively seek to discover the meaning which is the significance of any life.
Like this cow, we stick our noses and curiosity into the unknown, to discover possibly the wonder of the other. For we are part of life, and not life part of us
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