The cow parade arrived in the Surrey Hills in the summer of 2016. My cow design was based on the landscape gardens of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. If you look carefully you can find all sorts of features that are typical of his designs, including sinuous rivers, sombre shrubberies, and sweeping lawns. My favourite part of the design is the standing stones on her udders, one of which hides an anachronistic reference to my love of OS maps!
I was very kindly asked to paint her by Ecclesiastical Insurance who have been fantastic sponsors, arranging for her to spend 3 days at Blenheim Palace before heading off to her summer grazing place of Claremont Landscape garden in Surrey
Picture by Antony Thompson – Thousand Word Media,
Click here to see a short stop motion film of me painting my cow.