Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

About two weeks ago, the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) teamed up with lo­cal vi­su­al artist Lau­ra Fer­reira to not on­ly give mem­bers of the pub­lic orig­i­nal art­work but to al­so help ex­pe­dite the adop­tion of fos­ter dogs and cats by those will­ing to love and pro­tect them.

The in­cen­tive to adopt from the cur­rent pool of 137 dogs and 22  cats housed at the TTSP­CA Port-of-Spain Shel­ter in­cludes a four-by-four oil por­trait of the an­i­mal, mount­ed on an easel.

 Fer­reira, who is an an­i­mal lover her­self, is a self-taught fine art por­trait pho­tog­ra­ph­er and tra­di­tion­al por­trait artist from T&T. She be­gan paint­ing por­traits in 2012 and paints both peo­ple and an­i­mals, work­ing with acrylics, oils, and char­coal.

“I want­ed to bring a bit more at­ten­tion to the TTSP­CA ... it’s go­ing to be a spe­cial we’re go­ing to do every now and then be­cause it takes time for me to cre­ate por­traits. I think the three por­traits are al­ready tak­en up; the three dogs have al­ready been adopt­ed,” Fer­reira said.

How­ev­er, the rea­sons for the col­lab­o­ra­tion, as de­scribed by the Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er of the TTSP­CA and mem­ber of the An­i­mal Wel­fare Net­work Sara May­nard are som­bre, aris­ing from what she ob­served as an in­crease in an­i­mal cru­el­ty cas­es in the coun­try and a de­cline in adop­tions as well.

“We have seen an in­crease in de­lib­er­ate an­i­mal cru­el­ty. I have to say I have seen an in­crease in the last year and a half. Peo­ple tend to take out (their frus­tra­tions) on the weak­er mem­bers of so­ci­ety, which are the el­der­ly, chil­dren, and an­i­mals. We have sta­tis­tics; a lot of it be­fore was cru­el­ty through ig­no­rance. But, (now), I am see­ing de­lib­er­ate beat­ings … ” May­nard lament­ed.

“It’s a slow pe­ri­od for adop­tion, we’re see­ing less and less adop­tions be­cause peo­ple per­haps have less mon­ey avail­able ... less time. What we’re see­ing is a lot of an­i­mals be­ing brought in,” May­nard said.

Ac­cord­ing to Fer­reira, her por­traits work as in­cen­tives, so peo­ple would feel more in­clined to adopt them know­ing that they would be ac­com­pa­nied by a paint­ing.

“It’s like the next one to get adopt­ed gets a (por­trait); it’s a lit­tle four-by-four por­trait that comes with an easel to put on the ta­ble some­where. This is the first time we (TTSP­CA and Fer­reira) did this,” Fer­reira said.

Re­call­ing how she got in con­tact with the artist, May­nard shared that a friend of hers told her that Fer­reira want­ed to help pro­mote an­i­mals for adop­tion through por­traits.

“I’ve seen her work and it is ex­cel­lent. So I reached out to Lau­ra and I said, ‘I un­der­stand you’re will­ing to do this’ and she said, ‘Sure!’” May­nard said.

“I think it is a won­der­ful thing be­cause you have this keep­sake of this an­i­mal that you’ve tak­en out of the shel­ter, even when the an­i­mal pass­es you have (it).”

When Fer­reira was asked if she would ever do an ex­hi­bi­tion sole­ly of pet por­trai­ture, the idea was wel­comed whole­heart­ed­ly.

“I would love to do that! I ab­solute­ly love paint­ing an­i­mals. Five years ago, when I was just do­ing pho­tog­ra­phy most­ly and fash­ion stuff, I would’ve nev­er thought, I’m a pet por­trait per­son now,” Fer­reira said.

“When you talk about the treat­ment of an­i­mals, that runs deep. When I see a man kick a dog at the side of the road, I start to think, What kind of life does this man have? Or what is the psy­chol­o­gy be­hind that abuse?”

More­over, to bet­ter ed­u­cate mem­bers of the pub­lic on how to take care of their pets, May­nard re­vealed that their Port-of-Spain shel­ter will soon open an ed­u­ca­tion­al cen­tre for chil­dren aged 12 to 16 years old lat­er this year where they will be taught about an­i­mal wel­fare in a “dif­fer­ent way” through videos and lec­tures.

“We recog­nise that it’s very im­por­tant to teach the next gen­er­a­tion. The An­i­mal Wel­fare Net­work has a pri­ma­ry school pro­gramme, and the TTSP­CA has Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary School stu­dents com­ing here, and then we have some schools that come in to do a week of work to un­der­stand the run­nings of a shel­ter and work­ing in an an­i­mal wel­fare en­vi­ron­ment,” May­nard said.

Prais­ing the ini­tia­tive, Fer­reira con­sid­ered the ed­u­ca­tion­al cen­tre a great idea, say­ing it would help peo­ple de­vel­op their em­pa­thy to­wards not on­ly an­i­mals but peo­ple as well.

“For me, it starts with an­i­mals, just like how it starts with “Don’t lit­ter”. It’s the lit­tle things …” Fer­reira said.