Charities Determined To Milk The Painted Cows For All Their Worth

Racing Post 2003

She may lack the turn of foot that some of this week's yearlings boast, but the fibreglass cow proudly standing in the foyer at Goffs will still turn over a tidy sum when going under the hammer for charity later in the year.

For the 'Moo Cow' has been decorated by renowned equine artist Peter Curling and will be sold in aid of the Jack and Jill Foundation, the children's charity of which former Goffs supremo Jonathan Irwin is chief executive, as well as a homeless charity, the Dublin Simon Foundation.

She is one of 71 bovine stars decorated by an eclectic bunch of artists including Ronnie Wood an Andrea Corr straegiclly placed across Dublin and the surrounding area. All of them will be offered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin on Thursday, November 13.

Curling, whose son Sam is making a name for himself as a jump jockey in Ireland, has few peers as a modern-day equine artist.

He boasts paintings in the collections of such racing luminaries as John Magnier, Peter Savill, Dermot Desmond, J P McManus, Bertram Firestone and Frank Dunne, not to mention the Sultan of Brunei.

The Waterford born artist, who has a free rein to paint at Ballydoyle, has just launched his new exhibition, entitled Venice, Tipperary and the Turf which opened at The Gallery, Cork Street, London, yesterday and is on show until October 4.