The Answer

I'm sure you're all eagerly anticipating my response to all your interpretations, so basically: there was no intention. I just painted the picture just to paint it.

If you want a little more explanation, here's the short response I wrote for class:

"In class we studied how the intention of the author can be reinterpreted to create a different (and sometimes better) meaning for the piece of art. [Just to explain a bit more: we read an essay by a guy named Beardsley who talked about how the intention an artist has when making a piece or art (or the statement/message he's trying to convey) shouldn't always be accepted by the viewer - the viewer should get whatever message he wants out of the art, not necessarily what the author intented. Beardsley gives an example of an English poet who wrote a poem that was praising the Queen and being all patriotic and wishing the best for England, but another poet read the poem and thought it was incredibly sarcastic and satirical. So Beardsley said that since the poem worked better as satire, that's how it should be viewed, even though the author's intent was sincere patriotism.] I agree with Beardsley’s point that the intention of the author should not be the only definitive meaning for that piece. Beardsley shares some examples of this, but I feel that in most cases, if the author has a specific intention in mind when creating a piece of art, that intention is clearly conveyed to the viewers. So I wanted to evaluate how a lack of author’s intention affects the interpretation of that piece of art.

"To accomplish this, I attempted to paint a picture without any intention – to paint a picture just to paint it. My painting isn’t a social commentary on current events, it isn’t a (conscious) manifestation of my feelings toward a certain subject; I just painted a silly image that randomly popped into my head.

"To determine if and how my lack of intentions were conveyed through the painting to the viewer, I asked a handful of people what they felt my intention was when creating the painting. Most of them said something to the effect of “even when bad things are happening in your life, you can still be happy”. It’s safe to assume that this interpretation stemmed from the smiley face formed by the cow’s horns and the raindrops. I can honestly say that this smiley face was completely unintentional. I had no desire to include a smiley face in the painting. I was simply painting rain drops and I didn’t notice until after the painting was completed that the drops formed a smiley face.

"I think that most people want every piece of art to have an intention, a purpose. They don’t want things to exist without a meaning. And if an artist goes about creating art without any specific intention in mind, it is easy to accidently slip something into the piece that people will latch onto and say “that is the intention”. Just like Beardsley says, however, sometimes the intentions of the author shouldn’t be respected, sometimes the art becomes something greater than the author intended it to be. I myself have begun to call my painting Happy Cow. I didn’t intend for the cow to be happy, but the painting created its own intention and changed from a simple meaningless image to a powerful and inspirational message. I think now if people looked at the painting and simply said “this is a silly little doodle from a silly little college boy” as it was originally intended to be, they would be missing out on a valuable aesthetic experience."

But, Colin's response was pretty spot-on; I do think it's ridiculous that people get paid for abstract art, and there is way too much overanalysis in art (especially literature and visual arts). Even if that's not what this particular project was specifically about.