Black Squirrel

This is my second gouache painting. I'm really liking the medium. I've been looking at a lot of early American folkart recently, and love some of the flatness, and just plain weirdness of some of the imagery. Scale was often really skewed; whether this was intentional or not isn't always clear either. Anyway, I made this image of a black squirrel with that aesthetic in mind.

We have some black squirrels around here, which are in fact just a melanistic variation of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis.) I love them, and have always wanted to do a painting of them. Their dark fur is almost mink-like. A biologist at the Field Museum told me they tend to do better in suburban areas, rather than more rural or wild areas. This is because due to their darker fur, they are usually more easily detected by predators. Suburban areas will have lower predator populations, giving these fellows a better chance at beating the odds.

Text on painting: He was the only one of his kind in those parts, towering over the land. He sang to release the leaves from the trees. And with that, autumn arrived with its sweet chill.


This painting is available in the STORE.