I seem to remember telling you before, that while some paintings come quickly, others can take a little longer?
Well, this one – Prime Time… – is firmly in the ‘taking longer’ camp..! All will be revealed as you read on, but Ann & I couldn’t be happier with the end result: we think it’s been worth the long wait; hopefully the next one will come quicker!
Thanks for your patience and we’re both relieved and excited to finally share it with you.
With our warmest wishes,
Gary & Ann
For those who’ve been following from the start, welcome back. And if this is your first glimpse into The Otherwurlde, we’ll soon have you up to speed.
As ever, each piece in this series has been hand-painted by Ann, with an underlying story from myself. So what makes the Otherwurlde so special?
This is an other world—and a state of mind—where familiar animals move with purpose through ritual and tradition. The mood is hopeful; the station of each character is dignified and positive. It’s both familiar and yet… not.
Their armour isn’t for fighting each other. It’s a gentle ward against us—the ever-encroaching human realm. Weathering, patina, and verdigris are the marks of survival, not aggression.
Every painting is a self-contained myth: a story with a philosophical point, anchored in beauty. Objects—gems, balloons, lanterns, sigils—are clues, not props; invitations to read more deeply.
These works aren’t riddles to solve but visual tone-poems. Bring your own meanings; the paintings meet you halfway.
Now you know what’s going on, let’s see what this stunning new work has to offer…
Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?
Long-term subscribers might recognise this…
One of the most thought provoking artworks in the Otherwurlde collection, is ‘Journey’s End…‘. This beautiful, haunting piece features a lone armoured fox waiting on a beach, as a galleon heads towards him. A half-buried treasure chest – open to the elements – sits off to one side; its contents apparently untouched if the paw-prints in the sand are any guide. It’s as if the fox has acquired all the treasure he will ever need. The box’s trinkets & baubles are of no matter. They are irrelevant.
This is important to note, because whenever we’ve had the pleasure of explaining the work to visitors, the one question we’re asked more than any other, is: ‘What’s led the fox there in the first place?’ Well, with this new work ‘Prime Time…’ Ann & I decided to answer. In our own way.
Ann had the first idea for this new painting: little more than a fox encountering some dragonflies…
As we played with this foundation, key elements quickly fell into place. Instinctively, we knew that it might be an ideal time to return to the question posed by Journey’s End… and answer the painting’s big question. But how could we take Ann’s idea and expand it outwards?
A beautiful story was to unfold, just so…
Let’s begin with the fox. The first challenge for Ann, lay in re-painting the same creature from ‘Journey’s End…’ but from a different angle! That meant a few liberties could be taken, but their armour’s essentially the same (and you can blame Ann if they’re not!). But what Ann really loved, was the intensity she was able to put into its stare. Years ago, back when we were getting established, we were selling prints of another, intensely-focussed fox and I think Ann relished the chance to go back with several more years of experience under her belt and ‘have another go’.
I’ve put ‘Renard’ below, so you get the idea:
To begin…
The fox is young. He runs because running still feels like play, not strategy. The forest opens itself to him easily. There is no urgency in his movement, no sense yet that time is something to be managed or guarded.
Mid-leap, he clears a fallen trunk — once upright, once rooted and alive, now softened by moss and bracken. A mouse has claimed its hollows. Ferns have stitched themselves into its grain. The log has finished one life and, without ceremony, is sustaining several other lives… The fox barely registers this. Youth seldom notices the generosity of what has already ended.
What stops him is the air…
Dragonflies rise around the log — sudden, iridescent, unmissable. Until this moment, they have lived unseen: years spent below the surface of a nearby pond, growing slowly, patiently, instinctively. They have survived fish, birds, shadows and hunger. As with the fallen log, none of that time was wasted; it was preparation for a seamless passage from one state of being to another. Now they have emerged into their brief, intended — and final — form.
They have no tomorrow to waste.
Everything they are must happen now: feeding, mating, continuation. Their lives burn brightly and briefly, compressed into a season that is already passing even as it unfolds. They are not conscious — but the truth of it hangs around them like halos. This really IS their ‘Prime Time…’.
The fox cannot know any of this. He ran this way yesterday and none of this was here. Yet here it is today. Now. He only knows that something extraordinary is happening at exactly the wrong — or perhaps exactly the right — moment. He has time. They do not. And yet, here they are together. To the fox, his experience is one to savour. To him, as a witness? This, too, is a ‘Prime Time…’.
Around them, the forest seems to pause.
A luna moth lifts the darker edge of the scene, a quiet echo of other thresholds, other transformations. Bees drift through the air — familiar, industrious, persistent — reminders of cycles that repeat rather than blaze. Bubbles float past, fragile and whole at once. In one, a small beetle is suspended, carried inside a perfect, momentary universe. Within the Otherwurlde, these bubbles are not decoration. They are signs that the universe has turned a key — that something unseen has shifted to allow magic to occur.
To the fox, magic is precisely what this feels like.
He stands between three states of being without understanding any of them.
Behind him: what has died and become useful.
Before him: what is briefly complete.
Within him: the unspent abundance of youth.
His armour bears patterns we’ve seen before, suggesting that this moment is not isolated. It is part of a longer journey, even if the fox does not yet know where it leads.
This is not a lesson delivered.
It is but a momentary encounter.
Prime Time…
The fox will live far longer than the dragonflies. He stands wholly within his own seasons, repetitions and second chances. He cannot imagine a time when he will no longer run, no longer leap, no longer belong to the living rhythm of the forest. As the tree once stood without knowledge of the log it would become, and the nymph without awareness of wings, so the fox remains blind to the form he will one day pass into. For now, he exists only as himself.
Yet it is the dragonflies — not the enduring, not the stable — who are most alive in this moment. They are living exactly when they must.
And perhaps that is what lodges itself quietly into the fox’s future path:
that meaning is not granted by duration,
that time is not evenly distributed,
and that some lives — however brief — are meant to be lived at full intensity, without delay.
For everything, there is a season.
And today, the fox has stumbled into theirs.
In short? In that suspended moment, the young fox begins to understand that life does not move at a single pace — that some things race, others hover and endure — and that each has its own season.
Which brings us back around to ‘Journey’s End…’. I’d like to think there’s a message here, about understanding the deeper rhythms of life. The ebb and flow. To this point, the fox has been living a carefree life. But this marks a point of change. After this, he will have a greater understanding of his place in that wider circle.
Although the Original Artwork of ‘Prime Time…’ is currently Un-Framed, I thought you might like to see what I think is the best solution when the time comes to get it done?
I’ve considered a few options here and present what I think might be the best on-offer: a coppery-brassy tarnished outer moulding, with the artwork suspended within, over a dark charcoal grey board. What do you think?
One thing I ought to mention… The keen-eyed amongst you might’ve noticed that the prints for this one have been cropped at the sides, when compared to the slightly-wider original… We can blame the panel for this: being slightly over-square, cropping the final image was the only answer. however, it DOES mean that the lucky buyer of the original, gets to see more of the scene…!
I say this every time: our weekend stand at Cirencester’s Corn Hall might look impressive these days, but we still struggle for storage. That means we can’t bring everything you might want to see…
Neither Ann nor myself want to disappoint you, so if there’s anything you’d particularly like to see in-person, PLEASE get in-touch ahead of time and we’ll ensure it’s there!
Oh, I should also remind you we’re back on February 28th!!!
Thank you for staying to the end of this Newsletter…
We know that this one has been a long time coming – perhaps too long! – but we hope you’ll agree that it’s been worth the wait… It’s hard juggling everything at-once in this little business of ours, so we appreciate your patience when things slow down!
Above all, we want to thank you — for your support, your encouragement, and your trust in what we do. It means the world to us, and we couldn’t continue without it. Here’s to keeping the Otherwurlde light burning, together.
