Too Graphic?

Living in California most of my life, I have seen many changes in the “Golden State”. When I was around nine or ten years old, our family moved from the smog saturated city of Los Angles to the sleepy little town of Lincoln California. Just north of Sacramento, Lincoln has rolling hills, pure clean air and beautiful large oak forests. Even though I had been to Yosemite prior to living in Lincoln, This is where I fell in love with nature. All of the landscape and wildlife around became the main subject matter for drawing and painting.

Over the years though, I have seen this area develop giving way to concrete and asphalt. What used to be open fields and rolling hills filled with Oak trees, deer, hawks, songbirds, rabbits, mountain lions and many more species of wildlife has become shopping centers, office buildings, parking lots and houses. Thank goodness at least California decided to protect the Oak tree. I know there are a lot of agencies and organizations that try to keep a balance between the concrete and nature but they have a real battle on their hands many times loosing to the monetary monster.

With the development of these areas, wildlife was forced to move on to look for a new home. This would involve in most cases to cross the highway. Some made it across, many didn’t. I was seeing more and more wildlife on the roadside. The Coyote seemed to be the most dominant resident of the roadside. I was inspired to do a painting that would reflect what was happening in California. Instead of trying to explain, the image can say it all;

I titled this painting; California Wildlife. I submitted this piece to an art exhibit in Northern California and it was accepted into the show. During the opening ceremony, I noticed this painting was missing from the exhibit. I asked the curator why my painting was not hanging. He took me to a small room out of the main hall. There it was, hanging by itself. The curator told me that it was too graphic and offensive to display for the opening and assured me it would be moved to the main exhibit room the next day. He told me this painting was picked by a committee but he had the final say of what would hang in the exhibit. I told him that this painting is almost an everyday sight along the roads of California and that I have seen far more graphic and offensive paintings displayed in prestigious galleries. My words seemed to have bounce off of him. Two days later I went back to the gallery only to find that this painting was still hanging in the little room. I withdrew the painting from the exhibit. That was a long time ago but this painting was and still is a statement of the consequences of the development of California’s wild lands and habitat.

What happened to that freedom of expression? Do you think this painting was too graphic to hang in the exhibit?