The Totem Series: Fox & Beech

Vulpes vulpes

Foxes are nocturnal creatures and I love them.  They are, pardon the pun, the underdog.  Villified by farmers for frenzied chicken killing and by urban dwellers for their noisy dustbin rustling and courtship they are superb survivors.  I think they are utterly beautiful brain and body, our red fox's latin name Vulpes vulpes just means extra foxy, it's as if they cannot be described any other way. This image is from the photograph Ice Fox by Henrik Lund,  Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 and encapsulates the bright intelligence of the animal, ears cocked, curious but unafraid.

Vulpes zerda

Teto and Princess Nausicaa

In the UK we live with the red fox and I love all foxes but have a very special place in my heart for the Fennec fox.  Living in the desert it comes out in the cooler night and uses those enormous ears to hunt for bugs and grubs.  Teto, the squirrel-fox like creature in one of my favourite studio Ghibil films: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind reminds me of a Fennec fox.  The name Fennec comes from the Arabic fanak meaning fox.  The latin name is Vulpes zerda, comes from the Greek xeros meaning dry hinting at their desert habitat.  By contrast, Teto is a forest creature.

My Fox & Beech Print

The second element of this print is the shallow rooted Beech Fagus sylvatica, another latin naming that shows that the tree is so iconic it is kind of named after itself.  Sylvatica means of the woods.  The beech is considered a native to the UK although it's thought that it only made it across Doggerland to the UK to Scotland during the Bronze age.  Always used extensively for the wood the beech nuts are used to treat respiratory problems.  I have summer asthma brought on by pollen so this chimed with me.  Also, I was raised in Cambridge and much of the Newmarket area of East Anglia was covered in beech trees that were brought down during the great 1987 storm, they are shallow rooted creatures.  One of my favourite places in the world is the beech wood Robert McFarlane (one of my favourite authors) starts out from in his book The Old Ways.  It is a wood I played in as a kid sitting on the chalk rise behind Cambridge at the start of an ancient road leading to the south Downs and coast.

Details on how to buy my happy curled up fox at https://www.facebook.com/CarnoustieDriftwood1/

The Totem Series : Vampire Squid & Barnacles

Spellbound, last night, I watched the first of the BBCs Blue Planet II programmes, the BBC at its very very finest.  I never knew that dolphins surfed, that fish could change sex  or leap from the water to take birds out of the air.  Attenborough's child like joy in this most exquisite of habitats almost made me cry.

And this was just about the surface, so much to come, hope they'll be looking deep enough to find my most curious of beasties.  Something about the deep depths and mystery surrounding this creature speaks to something in me.  This close to Hallowe'en you have to have something spooky, and my second print from the Totem series is a living fossil that fits pretty well. 

Vampire Squid moving into defensive mode

Say hello to Vampyrotheusis Infernalis.  The name means literally vampire squid from hell, is an ancient squid deep red in colour that effectively turns itself inside out as a form of defense.  Beaks from similar creatures have been found in the fossilised belly of a Cretaceous plesiosaur.  It has the biggest eyes in relation to body size of any animal and has bioluminescent ends to its tentacles.

Vampire Squid From Hell & Barnacles

Barnacles are definately surface creatures, depending on the tide washing over them to provide the food they sift from seawater.  Their tenaciousness and jaggy nature made an ideal pairing in my mind with the vampire squid to represent that aspect of myself that is hidden from view, the subconscious that we perhaps fear but are also fascinated by.

The Totem Series: Introduction

Last year I began to create a set of lino prints inspired by the totem pole I saw many times in the Cambridge  Arch and Anth.  museum.  It made a powerful impression, the pole was placed in the middle of an atrium and up on the balcony you found it still towering overhead.  I loved the stylised powerful animals stacked up like a kids toy, capped with the mighty thunderbird on top. There's a small piece on it here by Allegra Jaffe.

I had always loved the art of printmakers and after a steep learning curve when it came to carving lino I decided to create my own totem pole based on this kind of artwork, made from a series of blocks which would be the same size and could be printed into the pole in any order.  I was looking for animals that I considered to be my totems.  In Native American mythology your totem or spirit animal speaks to you at different times in your life depending on the guidance you need.  For myself I chose animals that spoke to a part of me.

I also included plants.  All had to be plants that kill or heal, that are medicinal in small doses and lethal in larger.  The creative is also the destructive.  Curiously I chose 9 animals along with the thunderbird.  At Legends of America, never read before today, 9 is the number of animals identified as a person's lifetime spirit animal companions.