Lost Spirit

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Coloured gesso, acrylic, graphite, ink on canvas (2022)

Size: w 14″ x h 20″ x d 1.5″

“Przewalski’s horse” is the only truly wild horse in existence. Other horses thought of as wild are in fact feral, according to The Smithsonian. For many years it was extinct in the wild, surviving only in zoos and field stations; its population was at long last successfully reintroduced in the 1990s to its native Mongolia where it is regarded as holy and known as the takhi (meaning spirit, worthy of worship). I picture the takhi roaming from room to room in Palladio’s Villa Poiana, lost between heaven and earth. The image arose from the confluence of two dreams I had 15 years apart, the most recent just a few weeks ago.

Nereids in the Clouds (Detail)

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Acrylic, pastel, ink, Japanese paper on canvas (work in progress, 2022)

Size: w 30″ x h 15″ x d 1.5″

This painting began as a simple study of white clouds across a blue sky, with of course my two Nereid friends present leaping from one to the next. I decided it needed more colour, texture and complexity. The above detail is roughly 6″ x 4″, so I have a bit yet to do.

Nereids and the Ruby Sea Dragon

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Acrylic and Japanese paper on canvas (2021)

Size: w 22″ x h 28″ x d 2″

Another detail from a piece I started a while back (see https://npaulartworks.com/2021/03/28/leafy-sea-dragon-detail/). Still in progress.

Undaunted

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Acrylic, ink, water soluble crayon on tiles mounted on cradled birch panel (2021)

Size: w 16″ x h 12″ x d 2″

Just finished this piece for inclusion in a show of the same name, the annual OKWA (Organization of Kingston Women Artists) exhibit at the Window Gallery in Kingston, Canada for the month of October.

For a year and a half a herd of elephants has been migrating across southwest China, covering hundreds of miles – sometimes wandering through neighbourhoods or crossing city thoroughfares cleared of traffic by police monitoring their progress.  No-one knows why they left the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in March 2020, but diminishing habitat would have been a factor.  Perhaps then they got lost and just kept going.  Only now are they almost home again.

The mystery of the venture combined with the roaming herd’s determination and stamina has fascinated people around the world these many long pandemic months.  We have been captivated by the soulful, at times playful, creatures and taken inspiration from their quest.  In the words of a young man hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the always hungry elephants, “it almost felt as if there was a holy aura around them.”