Sketches and Mixed Media
This is a mixed media portrait of one of the sassiest ewes on my parents’ farm. Beatrice is incredibly nosy and spunky. She stands up by the gate and sticks her head out as far as she can to monitor what is happening in the barn, and she will kick anyone who does not give her a back scratch. She has a beautiful silvery/blue fleece, which I used to add the crinkly wool texture to the portrait.
Multimedia piece of needle felted wool from my family's Indiana farm affixed to an old, repurposed barn board on which I painted a barn at sunset using acrylic paint.
A whimsical pencil sketch of two friends splashing in a puddle on a rainy day.
This is a phrase from the movie Babe, which was also told to me when I was growing up in the rural Midwest when I started questioning why people commonly killed animals and ate their flesh. The cutesy sheep, the too neat and overly soothing quote, and the twee fabrics in the background contrast with the wild red wool which is representative of blood and the uncomfortable and commonly unexplored truth that eating meat means killing living beings.
The main idea behind this piece is that even when a person plans and organizes and thinks they know exactly where things are going, events can turn out unexpectedly. This unexpected outcome might be more interesting than the anticipated outcome and the person might learn more from it, perhaps, but the way things actually turn out was certainly not what the person originally thought was going to happen.