Portrait of a Dead Cat No 2

66 x 76 cms  1998

For Sale from my Studio

My husband, Ken, shot the cat, hunting in our scrub. It was at a time when people had started to declare, care-lessly, that all feral cats should be killed, so I particularly wanted to paint this second, very dead, cat in a sort of memento frame, as if it is hanging on a wall. The pity and the squalor of it all.

The landscape reflected in the brass (using the same brass surround as The Fat Lady Sings) was the view from my studio window.

The price tag, put there to increase the impression of the picture being a 'still life' type object, pictures within pictures, says $75 and when it was hung at a Royal South Australian Society of Artists' show a patron was most offended that it cost more.

Needless to say nobody wanted it on their wall.