Horse pays his own medical bills by painting

[Luddly Neddite]

Retired Racehorse, Metro, Pays Medical Bills By Painting (VIDEO)

When a racehorse named Metro Meteor sustained knee injuries in 2009, his racing days quickly came to an end and veterinarians gave him two years to live.

Four years later, Metro is alive and well -- with a new career path that pays for all of his medical bills and then some. He's an artist -- an abstract painter to be exact......

Metro wasn't strong enough to carry a rider, so Ron Krajewski, who's a professional artist himself, figured that if he couldn't ride with his new friend, they could at least paint together.

"I would sit outside Metro's stall and he would hang his head out and constantly bob it up and down," Krajewski wrote on Metro's website. "I would think to myself, if I can never ride him, maybe I can teach him to hold a paint brush and put all that head bobbing to good use."

I strongly suspect that most animals are very much more than we ever give them credit for or that we ever know about.

 

[Noomi]

I can't believe I am going to say this, but that artwork actually looks pretty good.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

But the new exhibition also features a remarkably life-like depiction of a flowerpot created by Boon Mee, a former logging elephant in Thailand. Could Boon Mee be the real deal--an animal artist? Or is Boon Mee just monkeying around like the apes?

"Elephants are not artists," Morris wrote in the Daily Mail. "Unlike the chimpanzees, they do not explore new patterns or vary the design of their work themselves. Superficially, they do appear to be more advanced, but it is all a trick." And the "trick," according to a museum spokesman, is that elephant "artists" are carefully led through their brushstrokes by a trainer.

But even if animals can't truly create art, it doesn't mean we can't appreciate the work. Keep clicking for a look...

See more animal artwork here -
Animal Art Exhibition Shows Work By Apes, Elephant (PHOTOS)

Anyone who is interested in this might want to look at the book,

Why Cats

More artwork at the link.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Several cat painting at this link. Scroll down about 3/4.

the f word: April 2011