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Outward appearances can be misleading. That was the idea for the Window Box Show. You see these beautiful houses with gorgeous window boxes overflowing with flowers, beneath windows surrounded by lovely shutters and pretty curtains. We wanted to take a peek behind the pretty curtains, or the metal cage in this case and see what was really going on inside. What you find is sometimes disturbing. A lot of my work is derived from my passion for animals. I can’t stand the thought of wild animals in captivity or the thought of cruelty to animals. Poachers killing animals for their “parts” - elephants for the ivory, gorillas for their hands to use as ashtrays makes me want to vomit. Some people think that animals don’t really matter or have feelings. I believe they do. I hope that my work invokes a little bit of compassion in you for these magnificent creatures. You know the old adage “you’ll never know what a man’s life is like until you walk a mile in his shoes”. Imagine walking a mile in this lion’s skin. If you did, a mile would be a long monotonous and mind-numbing walk, around and around and around inside a cage. The same tiresome path over and over again. No way out, nowhere to hide. Think about how you would feel. Angry, sad, frustrated, scared. The lion is a wild animal that needs miles and miles to run free. Yet we pen them up in spaces no bigger than our backyards. They need to hunt for their food, stalking and killing their chosen prey. Instead we throw them scraps of slaughtered meat. So the next time you are standing there on the other side of the metal cage, looking at a lion, thinking how beautiful and magnificent he is. How amazing it is to see him face to face and not in a book or a photo. Look deep into his eyes and remember to walk a mile. Kim Swain | ||||||
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