Squirrels; cardboard, riebeckite, titanium white; 8" x 7", March 2017.
These are studies for a project which involves observing a specific Western Grey Squirrel in a semi-wild urban area on the banks of the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon. The area is one where winter storms have created many downed and split big-leaf maples and cottonwoods, providing the ideal bright and splintered surfaces on which to reproduce the image of the squirrel using vine black, zinc white and mayan blue (non-toxic natural pigments that dissolve easily). The pigments would be mixed with water alone (no binding glue) so that they would gradually be erased by the rainfall. The Western Grey Squirrel belongs to a threatened species which coexists with introduced Eastern Grey Squirrels. The distinctively blue-grey tails of the squirrels appear almost like plumes of smoke. Permission to render the squirrels on the downed trees has not yet been granted by the parks service.