Cow Art

Title: Framed Picture of a Cow
Date: Unknown
Category: Sweet Ass Art
Current Status: Prominently displayed in my backyard tool shed

Look out Leonardo! Move over Monet! Piss off Picasso! Ya'll have been Art Slapped by this fine piece of homey bovine goodness.
Cows rock... I mean, let's face it... they are a goofy animal. They produce tasty milk and tasty meat and other than that, they just kinda stand around looking bored. And yet, there is something truly awesome about cows. Perhaps it was Gary Larson's use of these mammals that injected their image with some badassedness... who knows.
Maybe it was that stupid "It's a Cow Christmas" tape, but for whatever reason, Ray and I liked cows. Not as much as ducks, of course, but they were a close second. I have a bunch of cow junk... a cookie jar, a terracotta shelf decoration, a bandanna... at one point I even had a small stuffed toy cow (named "Cow") that would "moo" three times if you squeezed it. Cow used to hang out with me in High School. Once, during an Academic Decathlon training session led by the infamous Mr. Danielson, that bum Will Chesser reached over and squeezed Cow and so everybody in the room looked at me like I was a freak. Jerk.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where this came from, but I believe it was yet another "gift" from Ray for our annual "Terrible Gift Exchange" for Christmas. It was really more of a competition than a meaningful gift swap. See who could get the other the most useless stuff for $10. Quantity was obviously more important than quality.

Take a look at the back...

doesn't that just scream "masterpiece"?!!? I mean, I bet Rembrandt never had the brilliant idea to paint on cardboard and add a bar code to make selling his work easier. Loser.

Woodstock

Title: Portrait of Woodstock
Medium: Acrylic & canvas
Date: Early 80's
Category: Art
Current status: On loan to the Louvre

Remember my painting of Snoopy? Sure you do! How could you forget something so awful! Well, as an added treat, here's the companion piece that I did around the same time... it's Snoopy's little bird pal, Woodstock! Doesn't it look just like him? Absolutely.... not in the slightest!

My wife, when seeing this for the first time, had absolutely no idea who this was supposed to be. When I told her, she just laughed. I bet Rembrandt didn't have to deal with such indignities.

It's pretty ironic that I took the time to actually paint "Snoopy" above the picture of Snoopy which is, pretty obviously, Snoopy. And yet, where it certainly could have used an identifying label, this Baylor University color scheme inspired atrocity, has no helpful clue whatsoever.

I sit here, staring at this thing and I realize first off that whatever this avian nightmare is, it is assuredly something evil. Look at it's horrible, horrible face... it's sinister grin and malevolent eye staring at you in a sideways glance, plotting your gruesome demise in ways that only an apocalyptic fowl can achieve. You'll think twice about feeding pigeons in the park and perhaps that bird feeder so close to the house isn't such a good idea. This canary of Hell shall have your soul...

For whatever reason, while I do find this thing to be disturbing the more I study it, I can't help but think that if Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was inspired by the San Diego Chicken, this is what it would look like.

You'll note that here, as with Snoopy, Woodstock has no arm (or wing) that is noticeable. Also notice that one foot is disconnected from the rest of the body. Is it simply the clumsy brush stroke error of a child learning to paint? Or is it something far more sinister? I'll let you decide for yourself...