The Fox the Starling and the Foxglove Gate
The Fox, the Starling and the Foxglove Gate
Not only is the word "foxglove" beguiling - but foxgloves themselves are. Sometimes they have been cultivated, sometimes they are wild and sometimes hybrids that pop up in the strangest of places - big exotic spikes of strong colour, that seem to flower for weeks. They are magnets to pollinators, and if you have ever looked inside a foxglove, it is pure sheltered housing for sap-suckers (aka greenflies).
When I did this piece I was thinking about how magisterial and aloof foxgloves are. There is an old tale that foxes were given foxgloves by fairies . This was so that they could put them on their feet, allowing them to walk silently, perhaps even unseen, up to their unaware prey. In other stories foxes guard the doorways between this world and the next - sometimes they slip through them, taking those that follow them with them.
I sometimes think about the strange, shifting space between reality and folklore, why folk and fairy tales emerged and lingered. I imagined a hidden doorway inside a hedge —a frame of twisting vines and foxgloves, marking the boundary between our world and something else. A starling singing, lonely, on branch. At first, the starling was the watcher, the one who might step through. But then there is the fox.
A tiny fox, almost too small to be real - half-shadow, half-magic. A guardian, ready to bark out a warning. Everything is enclosed in the strong mesh of a spiders web.
The picture is made from hundreds of individual images that have been layered to create the final image.