Fox, early spring -5th August, 2022

Once, long ago in the future, before cars had been invented and shortly after they had ceased to exist, Fox was not killed on the road that baking August night. She did not die, in the act of pouncing, that first forage alone, and no fox, sensing the loss, mourned that startling life, fruitlessly scraping the burning blue-grey ground to cover the bright fur, already found by the flies.

As vivid in death as we never knew you in life we folded you back into the earth they denied you. You body is made of the screams of starlings and the call of the deer; the voles who eluded you and the fish darting in the streams where you drank. Your new skies are the fields you played , the trees whose shade you sought. Dream deeply little one, there’s rain in the air, and a gentle moon.

Fox. Early spring - 5th August, 2022. Fox hair with bone black, earth and charcoal in linseed oil on gesso and oak.

An exploration of loss, remembrance and regeneration through the arts of drawing, writing and burying. Exhibited at Dartington Arts School until Saturday 1st October 2022 as part of ‘Navigating’ and Arts and Ecology MA show of works in progress.