The Sacred and the Propane

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2007, private collection

This is my dad barbecuing some kebapi. The cow in the background was always intended to be in the composition, but it wasn't until this painting sat around my studio for a few weeks, the cow halfway done with that ghostly aspect, that I realized that I had to leave it like that. The trees in the background are cypress trees which are very common in Macedonia, the birthplace of my parents.

This painting is an important one in my artistic development for more than the way I dealt with the cow and grass, texturally –it's also the first time I used the red underpainting as a design element, leaving a red outline around most of the subjects in the painting.

A couple of years later, this painting served as inspiration for a new series dealing with meat matters and our (mostly disconnected) relationship with the food we eat. Read about two other paintings from that series in my post about the Sommerfest show at Blizzmax Gallery.

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