Artwork description:

Thirty minutes or thereabouts as the western sun drifts beyond the horizon, it’s the time wild things emerge from wooded edges. This is prime low light for game sighting. Then you return to the same location, set up a blind or place yourself in a downwind position and wait. Foxes are sly hunters very skilled at seclusion. While bass fishing on a Texas stock tank, I’ve seen them chasing each other like squirrels. Once when hunting wood ducks off a stream, I happened upon one crossing a corn field with a cock pheasant in its mouth, almost smiling as it moved quickly past me dragging its prey. I mentioned this to the farmer whose property I had the privilege to hunt on. He said, “If you see them, shoot them. They’re notorious chicken and wild bird thieves.”

Foxes are very adaptive creatures who can find a home even in an urban setting, near a river or in this case crossing a manicured golf course, then a road and into a cluster of wooded undergrowth. I recorded the time and returned later with a camera to seek out its lair. The linocut, Fox Hollow, was the result.

Since it was near the end of the day, my camera adjusted the light. Using a flash resulted in two light sources, one artificial, the other natural, creating a sense of a fleeting moment while setting the deep shadows in the middle ground focal point. I carved it with a Japanese aesthetic of dynamic and asymmetrical composition, creating a sense of movement and intrigue with an emphasis on line providing definition while enhancing the visual impact.
Never found or saw that fox but added it to the list of encounters.

Materials used:

Daniel Smith Traditional Black Relief Ink on Zerkall Book Smooth Cream over Somerset Satin White 250gm

Tags:

#movement #river #dynamic #wild #natural #game #wooded #undergrowth #fleeting #contempaltive #seclusion #impactful #asymetrical #privileged #deepness