Onocentaur

"Onocentaur"

18"x24"

Marker on paper

I heard somewhere that donkeys don't like dogs and can actually be trained to guard livestock by chasing off coyotes. I don't know whether this is true, but the comment illicited from me a dramatic and strangely humorous mental image of strife between dog and donkey. This piece is loosely inspired by that mental image. In this case, one finds a half-man half-donkey creature being accosted by domestic dogs (although they arguably don't look like domestic dogs, maybe I should have picked a particular breed and gotten a picture, but hindsight's 20/20.)

I really like how this turned out. Imperfections aside, I think it captured the feel I was going for. I didn't exactly want a violent image. I wanted to capture the tension of a situation that has not yet erupted in actual violence. In this case, both parties are about evenly matched and stand a good chance of serious injury. There's barking, growling, anxious rearing but either side has yet to make a deffinitive move. I naively thought all of this was self-evident from the image, and that the forty minute critique would require little explaination on my part. In actuality my genuinely supportive classmates were confused about exactly what was happening in the picture, but where nonetheless enthusiastic. My crits often go like this.