Sentient Beings
October 27, 2013
4:00pm
Fortes Room (room 409)
Sentient – adjective
1. responsive to or conscious of sense impressions.
2. aware.
3. finely sensitive in perception or feeling.
Can you tell whether your pet is happy, excited, frightened or in pain? Do animals express their feelings with sounds, or with body language such as a wagging tail or flattened ears? If animals have feelings or consciousness, if they are sentient, does it follow that breeding and raising animals in captivity for the purpose of slaughtering them for food is an act of extreme cruelty? If it is, how can human beings justify or rationalize eating meat? These are the types of questions raised by Betsey MacDonald (MA ’09) through her artwork and her master’s thesis. Her presentation in the Fortes Room on October 27, 2010 challenged those attending to examine these issues.
Betsey’s life has always involved animals, particularly horses. She has been a teacher for more than 25 years, recently switching from teaching chemistry to teaching art. Art has always been important to her, but she was discouraged in art classes in the past because she liked to paint the beauty of horses, which was not considered “serious” art. During a sabbatical in 2009, she spent the year at RIC painting and earning her master’s degree in art. She describes this time as “the best time of my life”, when she could paint what she loved. A long-time vegetarian, now vegan, Betsey was encouraged by her professors to expand upon her examination of the beauty of animals. When she received some PETA materials showing slaughtered animals, she realized how she would bring her love of animals and her art to a greater purpose.
Her exhibit of paintings included portraits of a pig, horse, cow, and sheep. Their beauty was undeniable, and in her paintings they glowed with life. Those present all agreed that the horse was a magnificent animal, the pig very cute with its pink ears, the cow and sheep each had their own beauty and dignity. But alongside these paintings were their counterparts from photographs of the realities of the food industry; a pig with its throat cut, a horse lying dead, its mouth agape, sheep and cows slaughtered. The paintings were difficult to look at, and that was precisely the point. As Betsey explained, humans who eat meat have a “disconnect” between their knowledge of the realities of the slaughterhouse and the meat on their plate. By depicting these brutal realities, Betsey hopes to spread her message that animals, as sentient beings, should be deserving of a life without exploitation, abuse, pain and slaughter, and that we, as human beings, should respect the rights of animals and not contribute to their exploitation by eating them.
The audience was engaged and appreciative. Two students who attended this program later said that although they had never previously considered vegetarianism, Betsey’s presentation gave them some new insights that they would certainly consider.
*Note: This article, by Debra Thomson, was published as part of Adams Library's Spring 2011 newsletter, viewable here:
"Sergio" by Betsey MacDonald
Betsey MacDonald returned to Rhode Island College for her Master of Arts degree during a sabbatical from teaching. Her master's thesis, "Sentient Beings" includes 22 of her original paintings depicting both the beauty and the slaughter of animals. In her thesis, MacDonald states:
As I've created this body of work, my focus has grown to include more than painting accurate images of animal life. I've made the decision, out of my love for animals, to paint their suffering and their deaths resulting from our brutality. Do animals suffer? Are they aware? Do they experience pain? Certainly anyone who has ever loved an animal would answer "yes" to these questions. I have no doubt that they do.
She quotes works by Michael Pollan, the Dalai Lama, Buddha, John Robbins, E.B. White, Gail Eisnitz and Gary Kowalski to support her belief that:
For our own peace and for our fellow earthlings we must take the step to expand our ethics and our values. ..... The decision to become more humane requires becoming more informed and making fact based choices and not ignoring the facts because they are unnerving. We need to awaken our conscience and make our world a more ethical and loving place. We need to respect our fellow earthlings.
Betsey MacDonald's paintings of animals show us their beauty and dignity as well as the gruesome reality of their slaughter. She uses this juxtapositioning to break down the disconnect between how we feel about animals and the reality of the consequences of eating them.
