Painted in July, 2026. 24”x24”.
Acrylic on stretched canvas. Price $720.00 Cdn. Unframed
This May we spent a fortnight living on a narrow canal boat while we slowly explored canals through the English Midlands. A good part of the route was through the countryside and most of the cows we saw were Holstein dairy cows. I took a lot of reference photos, but one photo really stood out for me. We were in a part of the canal that had high banks, with a little path down to the canal so the cows could drink their fill. It was evening, and the light was getting low on the horizon. The setting sun was no longer visible from our canal level vantage point, but it did create a wonderful “golden hour” lighting effect on the cows standing up on the top of the bank.
What really attracted me to this painting was the composition and the lighting. Your eyes naturally follow the cows up and around and out of the painting. I was also struck by how the lighting created a beautiful backlighting on the cow in the top-right side of the painting. It was a challenge to paint the different lighting effects (the cows at the top glowed in the evening sun, but the cow below was lit only by the ambient light and stood out in stark contrast to the deep red earth of the canal bank).
This painting reminded me of many summer evenings where I was forced to search for my milk cow up to two kilometers from the barnyard. It was a long hike up and over the hill to find her hiding in a clump of diamond willow just East of the highway. Fortunately, her distinct black and white pattern made for poor camouflage, and I could usually spot her from a distance. I’m not sure why she was reluctant to go back to the barn where she was assured a bucket of grain, but I enjoyed the excuse for a long slow ramble. There is a lazy stillness to a summer evening, and this painting took me back that time. I can still hear the crickets and the rustle of wild grasses as I followed her back to the barn.
