Let’s face it, as there has been no competent artist since the death of Augustus John, a pig wielding a brush is as good as any. Joanne Lefson, who describes herself as the “personal assistant, creativity mentor and curator to a 300-kilogram-plus painting pig”, uses the daubs produced by her porker to raise funds for her rescue centre, the staff wages, educational materials and general operations. “If this pig could paint, it was guaranteed to attract some healthy attention for the sanctuary.”
I can easily see all this as a popular movie – the pig with a paint brush or palette knife clamped in its jaw; Joanne as an attractive blonde activist (Scarlett Johansson might be ideally cast), who since childhood was anti-whaling, anti-vivisection, anti-fur, anti-meat. Rescuing animals was “more than a passion. It was my self-diagnosed intrinsic purpose.” Our author once ran the Sanctuary for Sick and Neglected Donkeys in Kashmir, which was a similar concern to the place now operating for cows, chickens and goats in her native South Africa.
Though Lefson’s affection for the animal kingdom is somewhat extreme (when her dog died, “most days it was unbearable and I found it difficult to function”), as is her personal identification with its denizens (“pig eyes are eerily human”), I can’t quarrel with her rage against factory farming, where the business model is, “grow them as fast as possible. Slaughter them as soon as it’s commercially viable.” I’m sure she is right to say, “If consumers saw how their food was being raised, farm factories wouldn’t exist.” I myself grew up in a family of farmers and butchers – and though I used to scoff at vegetarians, the joke is on me: I nearly died the other day from hypercholesterolaemia.
To make a stand, Lefson liberated a piglet from one of those “intensive facilities”, and plenty of comical mishaps ensue as the animal destroys gardens, lawns, cushions, furniture. “Nothing could stand up to the snout of that pig”, which is allowed the run of the house and goes for trips in the car.
“Keeping a pig,” we are assured, “wasn’t for the faint-hearted”, and its squeals could reach 100 decibels, which is as loud as a chainsaw. Having heard that pigs can play video games, controlling the joystick with their snout, and that dolphins, cats, parrots and elephants have produced pictures, Joanne left brushes, canvasses and paint pots in the sty. The next thing she knew, the pig picked up the brush in its mouth and approached the easel, “her head moving frantically in all directions… There was never any reason to doubt that she got a kick out of the process.”
