Additional Images

Provenance:

Acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection, Ottawa

Literature:

Gary Michael Dault, Artist Conjures Up A More Innocent Time, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, April 28, 2007, page R17.
Robert Enright, Joe Fafard In Conversation: Figures of Mettle and Feats of Clay, Border Crossings, 1997, page 20-29.
Bernard Mendelman, Sculptor Joe Fafard “Cow-Cow” Boogies to Fame,
The Suburban, Montreal, December 11, 1996, page B8.
Meeka Walsh, The Prairie Trickstering Of Joe Fafard, Artpost/31, Winter
88/89, pages 19-22.

Note:

Executed circa 1974.

Joe Fafard was born in the French-speaking farming community of Ste. Marthe, Saskatchewan on September 2, 1942. Meeka Walsh notes the origins of the artist’s most famous and frequently featured subject, the cow: “Fafard grew up on a farm where he began his reciprocal engagement with cows. He cared for them while they provided for him.”

Although now best-known for his bronze works, Fafard began his career as a ceramicist and was already well-known as a ceramic sculptor when he began working with bronze in the early 1980s. Asked by the Globe and Mail why the artist switched mediums, Fafard cited his creation of The Pasture, a 1985 Toronto Dominion Bank commissioned work consisting of seven life-sized cows resting in a grassy area between the towers of the TD Centre. Fafard explained to Dault, “It was when I got that big commission for downtown Toronto…Those cows are big. You couldn’t make them out of clay.”

Since The Pasture, the artist has not regularly returned to the ceramic medium, but has certainly not abandoned the subject. Joe Fafard’s stunning and life-like recreations of cattle have garnered the artist national and international acclaim. His personal connection to and respect for the animal is obvious from the intricacies of each of the sculptures which, despite the accuracy, the artist notes that “I have never had one in the studio as a model. I create them from memory and instinct”.

In an Interview with Robert Enright in 1997, Fafard described his representation of the cow in his work as a tribute to the animal “in the same way that when Eskimos carve seals, they are paying tribute to the creature’s existence is sacrificed for theirs. But I know very well that if we didn’t raise cows for food there would hardly be any. The vegetarian is the enemy of the cow.”

Joe Fafard has lived and worked in Regina since 1987 and his works can be found in major collections across Canada and Internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The artist has received numerous awards and accolades including the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Allied Arts Award in 1987, an honorary doctorate from the University of Regina in 1988 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 2002. Fafard was also named Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts held a survey exhibition of the artist’s work in 1997 and the National Gallery of Canada will feature an extensive exhibition of Fafard’s work beginning in February, 2008.