Day 13 of the 28 in 28 - Do You Like My Hat?

 When I was a child and then when I had children of my own, I read a book titled "Go Dog Go" by P.D. Eastman.  It is one of my all time favorite young reader books.. In it there is a dog couple who meet several times in the story.  Every time they meet, the girl dog is wearing a different and very wild hat.  She asks the boy dog, "Do you like my hat?" and every time but the last time he says, "No. I do not like your hat." and he rides away in his little car.  I laugh every single time I think about that senario, and looking at this cow, it is exactly what I think she is asking us... "Do you like my hat?" :)

I've painted Cows (and donkeys, giraffes, rabbits and pigs) inside of teacups before.. but, I've never balanced a teacup on one's head.  A seemingly trite and minor thing to change up, but it does make all the difference in the end result!

"Do You Like My Hat?", 9"x12", oil on panel
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Day 3 of the August 30 in 30

 Good morning!  Its day 3 of the 30 in 30 and things are getting real.  Just kidding… but this one was a real hoot to paint!  You may know I have a thing for stacking objects in my paintings – any number of things and often things that don’t typically belong together, and certainly not stacked on top of each other.  But oddly I’ve never stacked a bunch of farm animals until today, and farm animals are actually a more common group of things for artists to stack..  Today was the day for me to give this one a whirl. To explain a bit about my 'stacking thing', I originally started stacking 2 dissimilar things because I was exploring the concept of creating a visual story. The things you put in a painting are going to talk to one another, so to speak, regardless if they are related or not. I wanted to see what kind of story would be created by putting together seemingly unrelated objects.. and have had a lot of fun in the process!  These guys were a bit of a tame diversion for me since they all have the common denominator of being farm animals.. but it was still fun to figure out how to balance them and the composition and then of course to paint them!

Vertical Farm, 11"x14", oil on gessoboard

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Incidentally, did you know that the tradition of stacking animals in folk art started with the story “The Town Musicians of Bremen" written by The Brothers Grimm? In the story, a donkey, dog, cat and rooster find themselves having to scare away some robbers by standing on each other’s backs.  If you want to read the whole story, check out this website.  I’ve always loved folk tales for their whimsical imagery… and now I’m thinking I may need to paint a rooster on a cat on a dog on a donkey… 😊  While poking around for stacked animal lore, I found a picture of this awesome statue by Gerhard Marcks depicting the Bremen Town Musicians located in Bremen, Germany.