Inspired by the bulls of Mudgee and Lennox Head, and by the writing of Ernest (Death in the Afternoon) Hemingway, the artist Angus McDonald is fascinated by bulls. His new collection of wistful and sturdy bulls will surround the directors, management and sponsors of the Sydney Easter Show as they lunch next Thursday at Tim Olsen's Woollahra art gallery, two days after the opening there of McDonald's exhibition, 'Snort!!'.
The bull art works, priced from about $11,000 to $15,000, include the winsome Warren, the solid Malcolm, and the sweet Sedley. But what's this? Amongst the beguiling bull portraits is a small collection of cowhide furniture, including the Consuela Chaise ($17,000) complete with hooves, and the Ferdinand Rocker, sold before the exhibition for a slice under $ 5,000.
The appropriately named Angus, who worked in banking and a stockbroker's office before studying art in Sydney and Florence, says the hide pieces are 'a homage to the bull in furniture'. But to paint beatiful animals then to feature their hide as objects?
'I guess that's what we do with them. We eat them.'
The artist, who has read a lot of Hemingway in his time, concludes that if he had to choose between a bull or a matador as a friend, he woud choose the bull because 'the bull doesn't have an ego'.
