Antlers

I am enthralled with a recent book by the artist James Prosek, Ocean Fishes. The very fact that such a book of paintings of individual fishes was even created seems to affirm and capture everything that I am drawn to in this world. Wistfulness at loss, fragility, and the ephemeral nature of all true beauty; wonder at the existence of one single sentient being; and a love of science but a preference for art when faced with the mystery that is just one inner life.

"The field guide notion of a species ‘type’ felt inadequate, even misleading. Prosek’s contemplations culminated in the glorious paintings of his latest book, Ocean Fishes (2012): he made a simple but profound decision to paint the specific, individual fishes he encountered."

(http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/the-science-of-animal-consciousness/)

I am working on a drawing I had planned many months ago, of a deer skull and antlers that my father gave me.  I believe it is the skull of a deer that I helped my father dress and skin many years ago, one of the biggest he ever encountered.

A friend was asking me about my fascination with antlers, why I like and collect them when I am not really much of a hunter in practice.  He wanted to understand what the appeal was.
I had never really thought it through before, but as I put together my answer for him I felt it worth writing down.

Apart from the fact that I simply love the lines and forms that antlers make from different angles, I find them compelling emotionally because they grew from the very body of a magnificent creature, long since dead.  They are like a crown - though one generated by and sprouting from the essential nature of the being itself, made of his very substance and energy.  Not a crown bestowed from without, but one extruded from, indeed a picture of, his very essence.

Dry, dead antlers on the forest floor (or on the wall above my fireplace) are the remnants of glory that remain after the demise of a beautiful, majestic creature.  They outlast him, and are a testament to all that he was, and attained in life.

The drawing I am working on was planned long ago, for all of these reasons.  But it has taken on new meaning for me since my brother's passing, and I am going to title it something that reveals that it is now about him.  Perhaps the title will just be 1965-2013.