"John Kelly's paintings at first seem wholly defined by their humour, but are revealed as serious, delightfully ambiguous investigations of Australian World War II camouflage artists; for example William Dobell's role in the production of papier-maché cows." (Ross Wolfe, Director, Samstag Program, as cited in Samstag: The 1996 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships, University of South Australia, Underdale, SA, 1995.)

Painted Cows references William Dobell's appointment as an official artist commissioned to make papier-maché cows during the Second World War. The cows were meant to distract Japanese pilots surveying rural areas for military defence bases. Kelly has been intrigued by the bizarre government ruse and has dedicated much of his oeuvre to the subject, creating surreal images of cows positioned in empty rural settings. This painting displays Dobell's cows jostled into a bizarre, abstracted jigsaw of bovine flesh. Piled up as if discarded at the end of their shelf life, the image appears cropped, as if the viewer could look beyond the canvas to discover fields of similarly stacked cows. While Kelly's paintings are surreal they are not a novelty - his skilled draughtsmanship and superb execution of paint instead reveals intelligent sociological commentary on Australia's war effort by an artist of great technical merit.