Mary Downe

Trophy Hunting

November 28, 2002 - January 9, 2003

This series of paintings addresses my concern about hunting.

In my seven years spent living and painting in France, I developed an obsession with formal gardens and animal trophies. It is not uncommon to proceed through a formal French garden, enter a chateau and find oneself confronted by a trophy wall display of numerous, sometimes fifty or more horns on plaques, arranged in a geometric pattern reminiscent of the garden’s formality.

My paintings embody the tension between the chaotic freedom of organic growth and the orderly contrivance of human intervention.