Amarillo Sod Poodles 

Lucia Heffernan's painting presents three prairie dogs embodying the spirit of the American West. Each figure is adorned with symbolic attire: cowboy hats marked with an ‘A’, red bandanas, and baseball bats, alluding to the Amarillo Sod Poodles baseball team and Route 66, represented with a road sign. The cowboy, a recurring figure in the American psyche, evokes notions of rugged individualism and frontier expansion. Note how the artist has presented the bandanas, a direct descendent of the kerchiefs worn by cowboys and bandits. The cowboy hat, a secular crown, echoes the headdresses of ancient rulers. The baseball bats could allude to the club of Hercules, or the Vajra of Indra, tools used by heroes and deities. Symbols like these persist, transformed across epochs. They are vessels that carry cultural memory from one age to the next. Through these symbols, Heffernan’s painting taps into a rich, subconscious current. The image may evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia, myth, and cultural identity.