Nick Bodimeade - Pastures

There is something very paintable about a cow.
Perhaps it's the way it's almost oblong from the side with its massive body and tiny head and legs - it seems to neatly fit the shape of the canvas.
Maybe it's the camouflage-like patterns that simultaneously reveal and disguise, setting up echoes with the forms of clouds, rocks and vegetation and thus connecting figure to ground.
A group of cattle organize themselves in relation to each other and the terrain with a herd based compositional sense that underpins the repetitive but varied patterns of black, white and green, light and shade and positive and negative - as if mirroring the painted relationships of subjects to the field of the canvas and a provocation to the viewers' deep-rooted propensity for pattern recognition.
Then there are the cow bodies themselves - huge, warm and gentle and deliciously smelly. Back in the day they often shared our homes, providing us with milk, meat, heat and companionship.
From the caves at Lascaux to the graphics on milk cartons there is something about a cow.