Spectral Visitors

While a recent illness sent me to the hospital, an interesting phenomenon happened. For about a week, I was visited by a host of animals.

It happened every afternoon right at sunset when it was just starting to get dark. Into my room would flow a menagerie of wild animals. I say ‘wild’ but in fact they were all familiar to me. All of them were animals that I had seen including raccoons, foxes, squirrels, deer, bobcats, and a moose. Amazingly enough, one night that moose got up on my bed and rubbed his head against me!

The other unique attribute that these animals all had was their color, or absence of it -- they were an off-white, almost grey. There were no details, just the animal in its outline and shape. As they flowed into the room, they would all sit bunched together on shelves. The groupings were like still lives--but of vibrant, living animals.

In this new series based on this experience, I have created some of the animals that visited me, but they are just the essence of the creature, without great detail or ornamentation. I am hoping to capture that purity and spirit of these spectral visitors that I was fortunate enough to witness for a brief period of time.