I took a photo of a wrangler at a rodeo wrestling a calf to the ground, grabbing its horns, twisting its head, both bodies locked in one shared, straining effort. Then I thought of pulling them apart. The wrangler grapples with nothing: braced, bent low into a fight with no visible opponent. The calf twists at the same violent angle it would if still held, though nothing is there to twist it. Neither looks disengaged; if anything, both are more consumed than in the photograph, suggesting that the threat has not vanished but moved inward.
The wrangler seems struggling against a danger or challenge he's certain is real. The calf seems to be twisting away from a panic that may only exist in its mind.They never touch, but they share the same red field and charged air.The scattered field between them reads as a kind of contact, like a current arcing between two isolated nervous systems. Two private terrors, occupying the same space, never meeting, but still speaking to each other.
This is a reading that came, as usual, after the painting was well under way. Another possible reading would be the alienation of a worker from the object of his labor, motions continuing after the relationship that gave them meaning is gone. I don't think it's the truer story because the bodies are too invested for that kind of distance, but the painting leaves room for it. Fear and alienation aren't so far apart; both describe a struggle that takes place upon the absence of its cause.
