This project was created for the Art festival Borkel & Schaft. It took place in the Brabantse village Borkel & Schaft, different artist where invited to make a side specific exhibition on a place in the village, like windmills, churches, schools, sheds, everyone had another place. I choose the dairy farm from Wim and Esther Kwinten.

I created two paintings based on my visit to dairy farm De Melktap. I spent a day observing how the cows were milked, how they moved, and how they interacted with one another. What I value about this dairy farm is its openness: the grounds are accessible for anyone to come and look around, even inside the barns.

At the same time, I am engaged in another project: organizing an exhibition in a meadow with horses. I wish to exhibit my paintings among the animals. When the opportunity arose at De Melktap – the Old Milking Stable, I felt called to build a bridge to the cows and to bring my works into the stable or meadow.

Cows and horses are both herd animals, prey animals, and for us, working animals. They differ from pets: we do not live with them inside our homes, but keep them outside or alongside our living environment. They do not fall into the category of companion animals, because we expect something from them. A horse is generally meant to be ridden, a cow to be milked. They are required to participate in our society, to justify their existence.

How do we keep cows, and how do we relate to both animals? And how do the animals relate to us? Who is the creature behind its performance, and can I draw a connection to myself? Who am I when nothing is required of me? How can we look at each other, in the vulnerability of unproductivity?

This is the field—or rather, the tension—that fascinates me, and in which I seek to explore all the layers of our relationship and of the animal itself, capturing them in images, without judging in my role as maker.