Today's most mooving paintings

Some people spent their pandemic days on their laptops or baking bread. Laura Cashman spent her time photographing and videoing Boston's own mini-herd of cattle - Allandale Farm's Willard and Curtis - after which she'd return home and create paintings of them.

I loved painting their tangled coat of hair - so suggestive of dripping paint, and their large, curved horns that defined and separated these beautiful animals from the landscape. Being with them, observing how calm and peaceful they were quieted my mind. Their presence was strangely comforting and gave me respite from my world of anxiety and uncertainty. I imagined Willard and Curtis as protectors, substitutes for nurturing figures.