Boxing Hares, Round lV.

Why do I draw and paint animals?

I have been drawing them since I could hold a pencil.

The first recorded paintings are of animals and stick figures of those who hunted them, perhaps painted because of there significance for survival.

Our changing relationship with animals has been documented through art as they have been domesticated, used for entertainment, sport and harnessed for work. Today our ties with animals are very different to that of even recent history, meat is processed in factories, wildlife television coverage offers us views of animals we would never experience in life, very few circuses’ now use animals, and we embrace cats and dogs passionately as part of the family.

Looking at animals I see understand better what marks me out as human but it also leads me to question the anthropomorphism that attributes human values to animals especially those closely associated with humans. Recent sophisticated brain imaging techniques have shown that humans form emotions in the primitive part of the brain such as the limbic system that we share with all animals, whilst it is easy to see the differences between humans and animals and that animals will have there own comprehension and experience of life, feelings of longing, loneliness, loss, and unhappiness etc, exist on a spectrum and are not exclusively human values but felt by all sentient beings to some extent.