Angelus Rodentia

A collaboration between a cat and his owner...

... he tends not to eat what he kills (the cat that is... The owner tries hard not to kill (daddy longlegs' excepted) but does eat animals that have been killed).

Again ... to try and make work that explores the notion of Ambivalence.

Why?

I'm not sure I any longer know .... It's become a quest.

I suppose it teeters on the edge of acceptability and forces me to think and make in a strange place.

There's nothing new in what I'm doing here .... hybrids are the stuff of mythology.... and there's nothing new in taxidermy.

What I suppose is new is the sensibility of this moment.

J. came in and said 'I just wonder if it's disrespectful.'

Perhaps it is ..... but if it's disrespectful to take something dead and use it for this ... is it more or less disrespectful to take something living and kill it and eat it? Are leather goods disrespectful?

Opinions divide in this area but I suppose my point is that some who will readily scoff a steak and sport a leather bag baulk at what I do .... make use of the skin and bones of a creature after death.

Perhaps it is in this problematic area that the power of these pieces(supposing there is some)lies. The stuffed animals and birds still carry their form.... we expect them to move. They are where they should not be. Artistry has created an illusion. So our reaction to a stuffed mouse can be similar to our reaction to the living mouse. It retains it's creatureliness. What is dead looks much as it did when alive .... but now inanimate.

Of course you might hate mice and feathers .... in which case ambivalence is not what you'll be feeling. I think there's a strange loveliness to them.. but perhaps I would.

My plan is that over the next 6mths/year I'll continue to produce paintings of my taxidermy pieces... not sure why (P'raps 'cause I just like painting?)

Of the taxidermy .... I still don't really like it but force myself on ....If anyone's going to do it I feel it should be me. (I have a renewed respect for butchers and especially surgeons who cut into the living)

Despite the fact that the animal is well dead (and has in fact spent some long while in my small freezer)I am always anticipating the breath, the squirm .....

Anyway enough from me

Angelus Rodentia