SUN & MOON

Yet just as the day has two halves, one governed by the sun and the other by the moon, so there are many people of the day and who busy themselves with daytime deeds, whilst others are children of the night, their minds consumed by nocturnal notions; but yet there are some in whom the two merge like the rising of the sun and the moon in the day.

Aino Kallas

As companions to the night images of Arno and Barrett's portraits there are the two drawings that represent day and night - the sun flower with the golden host of butterflies and the moonflower with its ghostly butterflies and moths.  I have done a series of drawings using the idea of butterflies and moths camouflaged in a night sky - their markings helping them to pretend they are stars, galaxies, explosions. 

IO is a drawing dedicated to the moon of Jupiter discovered by Galileo.  The brightest moth, almost in the center of the drawing, is an Io moth, Automeris io, and below it is a butterfly called the Peacock, Inachis io.  The rest of the cast is working to blend into the night sky.  The Seurat-like border of the drawing is my interpretation of the one of the Hubble telescope photographs of the farthest realms of outer space.

FLY was drawn in honor of the retirement of Susan Gold from the art department of the University of Windsor.  Susan is one of my favorite artists and deserves the time to fly on her own.  It is a very difficult thing to achieve as an artist.

PAPILIO PARIS

Paplionidae Paplio paris is perhaps my favorite butterfly.  It is a beautiful name for a radiant creature. This is the most recent and may be the last in this series. Drawing dots can be addictive and also exhausting.  If there is one more it might be only black and white butterflies and moths with perhaps more color in the sky.

All of the specimens were drawn from the collection of the University of Michigan.   The curator of the collection, Mark O'Brien, has kindly given me access to the insect range and space to draw.

It is very much like what I imagine heaven would be.