“To witness birth, raise an animal, slaughter it, and consume it is something I have only now come to experience,” says the artist Deborah Oropallo, who began exploring the relationships of man to animal, animal to animal, and animal to food when she moved to a farm in Novato this past summer.

Oropallo’s awakening “raised visceral emotions and unanswered questions,” spurring her to create this series of mixed media on paper. Having at first considered the bucolic style of 16th and 17th century Dutch still-life painters, Oropallo instead produced intensely charged works that provoke the same kind of guttural reaction one might experience when viewing art by Damien Hirst. Inspired by the artist’s observations of chickens, this hybrid image titled Plymouth Rock is composed of two photographs—one of a raw bird layered with one of a live chicken printed on chiffon.

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This article was published in 7x7's February issue. Click here to subscribe.