Story behind the work: ‘Woman with Fox’

‘Woman with fox’. 2021.

Oil on oil paper.

The mind is an interesting thing. Who would have thought a child watching ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls’ would years later be sat at an easel and randomly have a thought of a young Jim Carey parading around the foyer with the ‘Monopoly Man’ adorning his shoulders in protest of the ‘Monopoly mans’ companion who wore a taxidermy fox stole for fashion.

Admittedly I am a little addicted to TikTok mostly because I get so much happiness from the cute animal videos that pop up on my feed and I am delighted when videos of foxes pop up. Even though there is a rumour that foxes roam my local area of Sydney I have never seen one in real life but as I did watch a lot of Disney films growing up including the classic ‘The Fox and the Hound’ I feel a nostalgia and curiosity for them.

When painting this work I was a little worried that the fox would look like a taxidermy when what I preferred to present was an imaginative work where this woman was cuddling a very much alive and happy fox friend. Not wanting to be overt I chose to lightly imply this merely by having both the fox and human eyes the same colour.

ABOVE: Stages of development. First the composition was sketch in Burnt Umber paint followed by an underpainting in the same pigment to map out Values (ie how light and dark areas were).