The little girl was sitting too close to the television again, idly flipping through channels with the large remote requiring two hands. Like pages of a magazine adults carelessly flip through, so did she ‘turn’ the channel. It was at this moment though, that something unusual caught her eye...

A desert— and a cowboy.

The cowboy was alone, trudging through the vast, sun baked landscape. What garnered for attention however was not the overwhelming amount of heat waves, or the cowboy in particular, but what he was carrying: A saddle. A big typical western saddle. The staggering feeling of confusion and question overtook her. There was something very wrong with this picture.

“Daddy, why’s he not riding his horse?” she asked with the volume of a typical child.

She did not know why, but it was almost terrifying to see. Cowboys always ride horses. They practically lived on their backs. You could never imagine a cowboy without his horse. They were seemingly one. It quickly became the most unsettling feeling in the world to see him carrying a saddle, instead of sitting in one.

“Isn’t that thing supposed to be on the horse?” she asked.
“He shot it.”
“…what?”
“The horse broke its leg, so he shot it.”

Dismay and shock rattled her bones. Preposterous. Why would anyone shoot a horse just because it broke its leg? You don’t shoot a cat or a dog or a person just because it broke its leg. Can’t he just mend it? Fix it? Put a cast on it?

“How do you know? I just turned the channel. Have you seen this before?”
“Nope, that’s just the way it is. If the horse breaks its leg, they have to shoot it. That's the only explanation for him carrying the saddle.”

Before the girl could combat with more questions, she heard voices from the television. The cowboy had reached a camp. With indifference in his tone, he explained that his horse had broke its leg. The entire scenario was very ordinary, routine, a habit-- as if it happened all the time. As if it were just a regular day happenstance; a casual casualty.

“See?”

The little girl didn’t respond on the subject again. She didn’t even turn the television off. She just walked out of the room.

---

This was a very personal project for me. The idea basically came from the fact that horses, an animal I dearly love, are shot dead when they sustain an injury too great to repair. It’s the most humane way for them to go, despite the gruesomeness. Despite the suddenness... I then mixed it up with a few memories of grungy, graffiti filled walls seen on streets, garages, parking lots, etc that I was accustomed to when I was younger, as well as the nearly tangible atmosphere certain unnamed relatives brought home with them from their various gang related activates. It’s too complicated to get into here, but what you see is basically a clash of non-related memories. It might not make sense to anyone, and this painting might be something most people could care less about, but it affected me every time I decided to work on it. So it holds a dearness to me.

I didn’t use any textures and painted everything, as I feel that’s the best way to learn, and personally, I wanted to be involved with every paint stroke. Even so, I still don’t know what to think of this, quality wise. I keep staring, wondering if it’s any good. I guess I should just shrug it off and let the viewers decide.

By the way, in case it isn't obvious, the little girl was me. It’s one of those memories I’m sure my dad forgot minutes after it happened… but I never will.