Rabbits

One of my approaches to the rabbit is iconoclastic. I paint rabbits, not bunnies. The rabbit is a creature with many associations. First and foremost is The Bunny, which is cute, innocuous, fluffy and bland, reducible to two ears, two teeth, and a carrot. Then there is the rabbit as reproducer ("breeding like rabbits"), the rabbit as fleeing prey, weak and with its only recourse in speed and cowering. Overall the animal is usually portrayed in a light that is condescending if not negative.

One of the aspects of my employment of rabbit imagery is to subvert these stereotypes. In my paintings of rabbits, I try to capture and enunciate the native grace of their movements and body - to remind the viewer that in technical terms, rabbits are referred to as does and bucks.
Like the mythical creatures of Thailand and China, they take on ennobled characteristics of other animals; the horns of the stag, the claws of the cat, the haunches of the greyhound. Like Japanese kitsune their horns and ears may multiply, implying a great store of wisdom or power.

The rabbits in the paintings may initially seem cute, (and of course that is an aspect of a rabbit's charm - sometime I'll post a little chart that explicates this further :) but upon closer inspection other details appear. These rabbits do not cower or flee. They have claws, they have teeth, their ears catch the wind like sails and slice like curved blades. My attempt is to remove them from one an anthropomorphised sphere of cute and cuddly, and reinstate them as amoral forces of nature. In Predator/Prey the eyes are blank, black, cavernous, leading inward into a hidden place, but also flat and forbidding.