Vegan artist, Gretchen Ryan, joins us from Santa Barbara, California, for a Vegan Nation interview! Tune in Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 4 PM EDT on WCUW 91.3 FM wcuw.org/listen.

Vegan Nation is a 1/2-hour radio show featuring vegan music, news, events & interviews. On-Air every week since 2015. Founded & hosted by Marlene Narrow, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. We’re in The LOBE (radio station’s newsletter)! Archives: vegansradio.com PHOTOS & PHOTOS

Gretchen Ryan is a highly accomplished oil painter who has been an animal rights advocate and vegan for twenty-five years. For the past six years, she has been working on a monumental painting Liberty Leading the Animals, created with the ambitious intention of inspiring compassion for animals and envisioning a better way for humanity to interact with them, serving as heroes rather than their killers.  The show stopping painting is seven feet tall by thirteen feet wide and depicts over 200 individual animals. 

The singular, luminous work was inspired by Ryan’s early experiences learning about factory farming and the profound moral shift that led her to become vegan. Drawing on the composition of Eugène Delacroix’s historic painting Liberty Leading the People, Ryan reimagines the idea of liberation as something all sentient life should be allowed.

Known for her highly detailed, classically influenced oil painting, Ryan spent more than three decades developing her craft before undertaking this ambitious work. She chose to render the subject with beauty and dignity, creating an image that invites viewers to reflect on animals not through shock, but through reverence and empathy.

Ryan is currently completing the final days of work on the painting after more than six years in the studio. A documentary feature film, Liberty, about Ryan, the creation of the work and the ideas behind it by Fauna Films is forthcoming. Through the release of the painting and a forthcoming series of prints, Ryan hopes the project will inspire deeper awareness and compassion for animals while supporting the broader movement for their protection.