Emma Fineman: ‘I Had A Dream Once About A Blue Cow With A Moon In Its Belly’

Emma Fineman’s 2020 canvas I Had a Dream Once About a Blue Cow with a Moon in its Belly depicts a cow, transformed through the artist’s signature use of bold painterly gestures and strong mark making, into a celestial and ephemeral being. The painting’s luminous palette and shimmering and subtle use of gold leaf are a response to her direct experience of specific locations, tied into the memories of these places and the stories we tell of them.

In October of 2019, Emma Fineman undertook a residency in Brescia, where she became increasingly interested in the notion of sanctuary spaces, and how they have been serviced by the use of narrative painting to relay spiritual messages. Fineman was particularly intrigued by the astronomical clock, housed inside the 16th Century Torre dell’Orologio, that featured characters of the zodiac, and symbols for the sun and the moon. These figures, as well as the richness of the blues and golds used to depict the sky in many of the churches she visited, stayed in Fineman’s mind as she travelled back to the UK.

The inspiration for I Had a Dream Once About a Blue Cow with a Moon in its Belly arose slowly, upon arrival in the UK, bubbling to the surface when Fineman took up residency at the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. She recalls, ‘this vision of a massive golden calf kept appearing in my mind and it wasn’t until February that I was able to begin creating this image. I had a dream one night where it appeared that all of these references smashed into one. There was a blue cow, a rich lapis as seen in the churches many months prior, and it was as if it had swallowed the moon. I woke up, went to the studio and made this painting.’

Fineman translates the art historically rich symbol of the cow, and its related iconography, into a modern-day icon. She states ‘the iconography of the cow functions as a deeply important figure across religions and nearly every continent of the world. Even the earliest recordings of painting in the French caves of Lascaux feature bulls with riveting character and detail.’ Fineman interweaves and revitalises these historical tropes and their cultural prevalence with an intensity and vibrancy of colour and form. Fineman is interested in painting as a material for this ability to communicate across time, stating ‘through my work I am able to continue a conversation with reference to works established far beyond my time and utilise unifying images that have such significance cross culturally. It is my aim to record these moments that perhaps for some unknowable reason affix themselves to the back of one’s mind and kick about with an unnerving permanence’