Sacred Cow

from New Morality

44" x 54"

acrylic on canvas

2019

Exhibitions

Houston, Texas, New Morality, September 21-22, 2019

Sacred Cow reconfigures the butcher’s diagram into a map of symbolic division. The cow, outlined in white against a black field, is segmented into compartments—not for meat, but for meaning. Each section contains a distinct visual fragment: Alexander Graham Bell answering the telephone for the first time, two African American girls on a beach, a woman speaking into a vintage phone, a lavender field of bare branches, and a radiant figure with stars as a halo and a glowing hand. She is ambiguous—saint, martyr, or divine proxy.
These images are not random—they are curated difference. The cow becomes a vessel of cultural memory, technological communion, spiritual projection, and aesthetic residue. It is no longer livestock—it is archive.

The title invokes both reverence and critique. In Hindu tradition, the cow is sacred—an embodiment of abundance and non-violence. In Western idiom, the “sacred cow” is an untouchable idea, often ripe for disruption. The diagram nods to halal and kosher traditions, where slaughter is sanctified and consumption is governed by divine law. Here, the cow is divided not by blade, but by image—each section a compartment of belief, beauty, or ideology.

Sacred Cow stages the same conceptual tension found in Herd, Spire, and Bound: the division of bodies and beliefs into ritual systems. It holds these tensions. A painted diagram of symbolic segmentation, where the sacred is both revered and dissected.