Pigcasso at work (Image: )
When Joanne Lefson rescued two sister piglets from slaughter seven years ago, she couldn’t possibly have imagined one of them would end up creating paintings worth thousands of dollars. Incredibly, the more artistically inclined of Joanne’s duo, subsequently nicknamed Pigcasso, has painted hundreds of abstract artworks that have now sold for huge sums across the globe.
“I’m working with a highly creative and intelligent pig,” says the South African animal lover who runs a rescue centre near Cape Town. “I feel very privileged and honoured to work with her.”
Joanne’s porcine prodigy lives with her sister Rosie in a barn-cum-art studio.
“She’s the ultimate underdog story – from almost being a McDonald’s sausage to artist for Rafael Nadal,” laughs the 51-year-old, incredulous that the international tennis champion has shelled out for a Pigcasso artwork, as have Hollywood A-lister George Clooney and British actor Ed Westwick.
The most that Joanne has earned from a single Pigcasso is a staggering £20,000. That was in 2021 when German collector Peter Esser purchased a swirling landscape of blue, green and white acrylic streaks entitled Wild and Free. This beat the previous record for an artwork created by an animal of £14,400 – set in 2005 by a chimpanzee called Congo.
READ MORE: Pigcasso! Unique talent saves arty pig from the slaughterhouse
But Joanne, who has written a book about her extraordinary sow, called Pigcasso: The Painting Pig That Saved A Sanctuary, predicts a new record will be set when her protege’s latest masterpiece is unveiled at a shopping mall in Shanghai next month.
“Pigcasso blows me away sometimes,” laughs Joanne, a free spirit with shaggy blonde hair.
“It was going to be a massive canvas with tons of colour and I picked white to brighten it at the end.
“Pigcasso then made two almost perfect circles. We turned the canvas around and she made a smile, so it’s a happy face.”
The mutually beneficial relationship between human and pig forms the crux of this heartwarming story. Joanne rescued Pigcasso and Rosie in the summer of 2016 when they were just four weeks old. Shortly after opening her animal rescue centre, she came across a factory farm crammed with hundreds of genetically modified pigs.
“You could smell them first,” she recalls, shuddering at the memory. After slipping the manager some cash, she was allowed to take two piglets home where they were soon charging happily around their new barn.
Aware that pigs are intelligent animals, Joanne scattered golf balls, frisbees and footballs across the barn floor for them to play with. Builders in the barn had accidentally left behind a paintbrush and Joanne threw this in with the other toys. It was then she noticed a curious difference between the sisters.
“Rosie ate and destroyed everything but Pigcasso was less intense, chewing everything except the paintbrush which she was gentle and nurturing towards,” she recalls.
It was a lightbulb moment, as Joanne recounts in her book.
“Was she channelling the spirit of Francis Bacon? Either way, she had just made a name for herself: Pigcasso. Then she picked up the brush. For 20, maybe 30, seconds she just stood there as if to say ‘What next?’ and then dropped it gently back to the floor.”
This piece reminded Joanne’s mum of Prince Harry and sold for £2700 (Image: )
Joanne admits to having a fertile imagination so she decided to experiment by giving Pigcasso a helping hand. She attached foam tape to the handles of several paintbrushes, enabling her pig to grip the brush more easily in her mouth. Within minutes Pigcasso had picked one up between her teeth and was swinging it from side to side.
Joanne was astounded and bought a canvas, an easel and some water-based paints. “To my amazement, Pigcasso kept showing interest,” she says. “Within a short time, she was picking up the brush. I added paints into this pot and she started to create these amazing artworks.”
To start with, Pigcasso’s brushstrokes lacked structure, form and flow. “They were basic paintings, something like a child drawing,” Joanne admits.
Then one day, she observed the formation of a definite artwork: emotive black strokes in excellent proportions that were aesthetically pleasing. Needing money for her animal rescue centre, Joanne wondered whether Pigcasso might provide a funding stream to keep her in business. She asked her art collector friend Harald what she ought to charge for a painting.
“Price them at whatever you want,” he told her. “If none sell after three months, double the price!”
Then fate intervened. Joanne was already renting out a guest room for tourists visiting the nearby Franschhoek wine valley. After two New York attorneys spotted and fell in love with Pigcasso’s paintings during their stay, they offered $500 for one on the spot.
This allowed Joanne to dream big. As she writes of her cultivated pig: “If her art continued to develop at its blooming pace, could she hog the limelight and ignite conversation? Who wouldn’t watch videos of her painting, and who wouldn’t want to support a pig, a sanctuary, and art with a message? In an instant, a new goal appeared: to sell a Pigcasso for a million bucks.”
To achieve her aim, Joanne started to guide the pictures as Pigcasso painted, shifting the canvas around and looking for patterns and shapes as her pet moved the brush.
She uploaded a few paintings to a news agency website and within nine hours Pigcasso had racked up 10 million views on a social media platform. TV stations began to call and Pigcasso featured in a Swatch watch design partnership and an ad campaign for car maker Nissan. “Today Pigcasso makes artworks that can look like a bird, an animal or something else, and it’s my job to spot that and name it,” Joanne says. “Every day is different. She has days where she moves or paints slowly and other days where she’s rock and roll and paints quick and crazy.”
Joanne Lefson watches as Pigcasso produces another masterpiece (Image: )
Joanne sent a photo of one piggy painting to her mother and she says: “Mum’s reply landed in my inbox with just two words: ‘Prince Harry!’” It was the day of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s TV chat with Oprah Winfrey.
Joanne says: “My mum was spot on. Harry’s blue eyes, the orange hair and that broad, boyish smile.” She posted it on social media and it sold for $3,000 (£2,700) to a collector.
To stop fraudsters faking a Pigcasso, the sow “signs” each work with her snout.
Joanne believes her pet may be psychic: when her mum turned 69, she requested two Pigcassos at short notice – one in mustard yellow and the other in olive green. Joanne got her artist straight to work. On her return, her hairs stood up on end: Pigcasso had painted a perfect 6 on one canvas and a 9 on the other.
“It completely blew my mind,” she says. “Explain to me how a pig can do that for a 69th birthday?” Joanne is keen to stress her animal loves her role as an artist. “When I come into the barn to set up her space, she’s always banging on her stall door to paint,” she explains. “It’s a sanctuary first and she’s the boss so she decides when and what to paint and how long for. Her ears flap as she moves the brush. It’s a form of experience and entertainment and she’s very much in the moment when she paints.”
Despite this, some believe the concept of a painter pig is hogwash. Joanne smiles when asked about it.
“If you gave all eight billion people on the planet a paintbrush, they would paint something, be it good or bad,” she says.
“But give every pig alive a paintbrush and only one of them is going to pick it up and paint something. In a world where everyone is trying to be different but lots are the same, Pigcasso symbolises a true original. That’s why her artworks sell for so much money.”
Joanne has three types of investors: people who love the artwork, those who think it will be worth a million dollars one day and others who support the sanctuary and the animal welfare message Pigcasso stands for.
“It’s meaningful art, and people understand and support that intention,” she says.
To date, Pigcasso has raised more than $1million (£780,000) for Joanne’s sanctuary and adjacent dog adoption centre.
Later this month, when her latest paintings are displayed in Shanghai, it could open up a lucrative new market in China. But some may question Joanne’s decision to chase investors in the world’s leading producer of pork meat.
“Can Pigcasso stop factory farming and make every Chinese person go vegan? No,” she reasons. “It’s about changing the world one step at a time, right? If one person at the exhibition decides to go vegan, that could save 4,000 animals during their lifetime.”
She is also hoping to break into the US market thanks to a TV documentary.
“Pigcasso’s artwork hasn’t hit the Hollywood scene yet but I’m optimistic it will be extremely popular if it does,” she adds. But Joanne understands time is against her. Born genetically modified, Pigcasso is prone to ill-health. Last year, sickness meant she struggled to paint or even stand. Despite her pet making a full recovery, Joanne knows she will be lucky to reach the age of ten.
“That she’s lived this long is amazing,” she adds. “For me, it’s always been about Pigcasso living out her life as nature intended – surrounded by empathy and compassion.
“Whether she lives another day or another three years, I understand that she will eventually die – but what an incredible journey. As long as she’s willing and able to paint, I’ll go on as long as I possibly can.”
There is one picture Joanne would still love to see Pigcasso paint. “If she could walk up and write the word ‘PIG’, that could be the million dollar artwork,” she laughs.
That would really bring home the bacon.
- Pigcasso: The Painting Pig That Saved A Sanctuary by Joanne Lefson (Octopus, £22) is published on Thursday. Visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25.
