14-Point Deer

Crowned in the quiet

First light at the bush edge

There is a moment, just as the light comes up, when the edge of the bush belongs to no one. Mist lies on the grass. The trees are black shapes. Everything holds its breath.

Then a deer steps out, and the whole morning arranges itself around it.

It stands half in shadow, head up, ears turned toward some sound you haven’t heard. The antlers rise above it like the branches of a winter tree, wide and pale and impossibly elaborate. For a long moment it simply looks: not at you, exactly, but at the morning itself, checking that all is as it should be.

Then it lowers its head and the moment is over. What stays with you is the stillness of it, and the strange feeling of having been briefly allowed into something private.

The artwork

This engraving is all about presence. The deer faces nearly straight toward us, its head lifted, its gaze calm and alert. Large ears flare out at either side, their insides softly shaded. Above them, the antlers sweep up and outward in a great open crown, broad and branching, reaching almost to the top corners of the coaster.

Below the head, the neck and shoulder fade gently into the lower edge, and across the flank you can make out soft, dappled spots, a lovely detail that gives the body a sense of light falling through leaves. The background is a smooth gradient of tone with no landscape at all, so every bit of attention goes to that face and that crown.

The slate gives the whole piece a cool, misty atmosphere, with the deer emerging pale from the darker stone as if stepping out of the dawn.