I was disgusted many were not

L

LoveTulips

Senior Member
Location
British Columbia, Canada
So I belong to a FB group where we all paint portraits and it is run by an instructor/artist whom I have taken lessons from online. He's a nice guy the instructor. Anyways, I'm scrolling through the portraits of the members, and I come across this woman who wants a critique on her painting of her son with rifle in one hand and in the other hand holding up this gorgeous dead deer's head. There is the actual photo shown and the painting in progress.

So many, many people are commenting on how she can improve her painting including the instructor. Me, along with a few others are horrified to see this photo and painting. I totally get that some people still have to hunt for their food. I actually don't think that was the case here. To me, it looked like trophy hunting. Regardless, why in the world would you want a painting of this lovely creature who is now dead painted? Isn't it enough that it was shot either for food or (sickening thought) as a trophy? The instructor refused to take the photo/painting off FB. I'm having second thoughts of staying with this instructor. What do you think?
 

I would feel the same! I can't stand to see those trophy pictures on FB. That's nothing to be proud of! Killing an innocent deer or any other animal! I don't know if I would stay with the instructor or not, that's entirely up to you. I just know it disgusts me very much too!
 
I'm only a 1st generation city dweller, so I suppose I'm not as isolated from nature. But a single incident of this kind hardly seems like enough to send you diving under the bed.

But that's just me. I'm neither judge nor jury, I just grew up differently I suppose.
 

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LoveTulips said:
So I belong to a FB group where we all paint portraits and it is run by an instructor/artist whom I have taken lessons from online. He's a nice guy the instructor. Anyways, I'm scrolling through the portraits of the members, and I come across this woman who wants a critique on her painting of her son with rifle in one hand and in the other hand holding up this gorgeous dead deer's head. There is the actual photo shown and the painting in progress.

So many, many people are commenting on how she can improve her painting including the instructor. Me, along with a few others are horrified to see this photo and painting. I totally get that some people still have to hunt for their food. I actually don't think that was the case here. To me, it looked like trophy hunting. Regardless, why in the world would you want a painting of this lovely creature who is now dead painted? Isn't it enough that it was shot either for food or (sickening thought) as a trophy? The instructor refused to take the photo/painting off FB. I'm having second thoughts of staying with this instructor. What do you think?
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You say the instructor refused to take the photo/painting off FB. Did you ask? If so, I feel you may not only be opposed to the painting but attempting to enforce your opposition upon others who do not feel the same way. Are you opposed to them as well? Perhaps it may be best to leave, but looking for and associating with only those who share your thoughts and feelings is not always the best life/learning experience.
 
VisualBrian said:
You say the instructor refused to take the photo/painting off FB. Did you ask? If so, I feel you may not only be opposed to the painting but attempting to enforce your opposition upon others who do not feel the same way. Are you opposed to them as well? Perhaps it may be best to leave, but looking for and associating with only those who share your thoughts and feelings is not always the best life/learning experience.
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Well, it is offensive to me obviously not to you.
 
dilettante said:
I'm only a 1st generation city dweller, so I suppose I'm not as isolated from nature. But a single incident of this kind hardly seems like enough to send you diving under the bed.

But that's just me. I'm neither judge nor jury, I just grew up differently I suppose.
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Some of us are sensitive to depictions of violence like this. Thank God because think what kind of world we might be living in if not for someone being here to 'apply the brakes'. We'd be living out The Purge. As it is, we're still very capably doing violence to our whole natural world in ways that too many either can't or won't comprehend yet.
 
VisualBrian said:
..... but looking for and associating with only those who share your thoughts and feelings is not always the best life/learning experience.
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I think some of us don't feel we need to share time with people who obviously glorify violence against the natural world. It's like suggesting we can learn something from that Wisconsin guy who ran down and then tortured a young wolf for hours in a pub before he shot her. What is there possibly to be learned from that? Maybe the point too is that those who enjoy that violence, could learn something from people who don't.
 
LoveTulips said:
The instructor refused to take the photo/painting off FB. I'm having second thoughts of staying with this instructor. What do you think?
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While I agree it is a horrible practice and not a picture I'd like to look at, I don't think total censorship is a good plan. It might be nice if offensive pictures were blurred and a person would need to click a button to see the clear picture. Though most of the paintings in the Louvre would need to be blurred because they seemed to me to all be people killing each other and horses in war. Though I guess maybe they weren't lauding it, and probably the painting of the dead deer was someone lauding killing it. People suck.
 
Wow. I’d personally have to leave the group. I understand hunting for food but despise trophy hunting.

Having thought this over, I just wouldn’t look at the picture of the dead animal. Leaving seems a bit extreme. I really do dislike hunting strictly for sport.
 
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I remember meeting Mort Neff as a kid in the 1960s. It was at the DNR Station in Cedar Springs, Michigan.

Mort's 1st generation of the Michigan Outdoors TV show was a fixture in living rooms across the State every Thursday. Mort had me hold up a pheasant somebody had shot and brought in to the DNR. That's how I first got on TV.

Here's a 2nd generation Michigan Outdoors promo-episode where Mort guested.


This was just normal stuff in this neck o' the woods.
 
All that said, though I did a little target shooting (hard to avoid really) I've never owned a firearm, much less hunted and killed any animals. Fishing, sure, but not hunting.

But cousins did, and they trapped and skinned muskrat, mink, beaver, etc. to sell the pelts for spending money. That went back here hundreds of years not even counting the times before European settlement.
 
dilettante said:
All that said, though I did a little target shooting (hard to avoid really) I've never owned a firearm, much less hunted and killed any animals. Fishing, sure, but not hunting.

But cousins did, and they trapped and skinned muskrat, mink, beaver, etc. to sell the pelts for spending money. That went back here hundreds of years not even counting the times before European settlement.
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I understand that for sure. I just don't understand glorifying a painting having shot an animal or a deer head with antlers hanging in someone's home or lodge.
 
As a former hunter, I wouldn't consider painting such a thing. I have plenty of pictures of me with my deer, mostly all bucks that I shot over the years. I was an archery hunter and enjoyed the hunt. I wasn't a hunter that sat in a tree stand and waited maybe for hours for a big buck to pass under my tree stand so I could take him down. I would track my deer and shoot him the way real hunters do.
 
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I would not like a portrait or photo of that - but I can understand instructor leaving it up and just critiquing the painting style.
Regardless of what he personally thinks of the subject matter he is taking the view that his role is to instruct and critique painting not approve or police the subject matter.
 
{shrug} I'm not a hunter, but one of my wife's business partners was a big game hunter. Safaris in Africa, Mongolia, etc. We visited him in his home, which was designed to showcase his collection of trophies. I quit counting at 100. This was over 25 years ago, and his collection was valued at over a million at that time. Yet he was (and I assume still is) a great guy. So, not for me to judge.
 
I certainly agree with the OP, but have to offer up that a high percentage of folks love to hunt and fish. Canada is a paradise for these folks, and to them there is nothing wrong about posting/painting their "accomplishments".
 
I would love to share a similar picture with you... Our 11 year old son, with his 1st deer, holding the same shotgun that I and my father both harvested our 1st deer with.

But I can't.... Because someone at the drugstore where we had the photos developed decided that it wasn't appropriate and destroyed the photos and negative's.
 
I live in a big hunting and gun culture area where they actually close schools an additional day over Thanksgiving to accommodate the first day of deer season. I once was at a college professor’s house where he had a magnificent buck eviscerated and strapped to a tree; I practically lost my lunch. The local paper publishes pictures of grinning hunters with their kills, and I find it abhorrent. When I see an animal, I see a living, conscious soul…

…but I have learned to accept what I cannot change. At least society is slowly evolving. My Walmart no longer sells firearms…
 
Of course it is a trophy kill, the image is proof of that. We 'judge' the trophy kill as evil.
If you are a vegetarian, it is a dangerous practice capable of killing you, I mean Vitamin B12 and protein deficiencies and other problems. If you are not a vegetarian, then some might 'judge' you a hypocrite.
 
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gruntlabor said:
:) I believe you are a vegetarian, Peppermint Patty. If so, it is a dangerous practice capable of killing you, I mean Vitamin B12 and protein deficiencies and other problems. If you are not a vegetarian, then some might call you a hypocrite.
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You would be wrong. I’m not vegetarian . I just don’t believe in trophy hunting. How does that make me a hypocrite? I was merely expressing how I would feel about being in a Facebook group with someone painting a dead animal they killed for sport. How is that being a hypocrite?
My husband fishes. He catches fish for food. He’s a good fisherman. We eat the fish. There’s nothing hypocritical in anything I said.IMG_6623.jpeg
 
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PeppermintPatty said:
You would be wrong. I’m not vegetarian . I just don’t believe in trophy hunting. How does that make me a hypocrite? I was merely expressing how I would feel about being in a Facebook group with someone painting a dead animal they killed for sport. How is that being a hypocrite?
My husband fishes. He catches fish for food.
We eat the fish. There’s nothing hypocritical in anything I said.
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Most (actually all) deer hunters I know take the carcass to a local shop that processes the meat, and it ends up in the family freezer. Venison. How do you know that the hunter in question did anything different?
 

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