Three Deer

THREE DEER Acrylic on Canvas | 55" × 65" | 2019

It took two years. Some paintings need that long to become what they are.

Three Deer is painted from source photographs that turned out — discovered after the fact, in one of those moments of serendipity that feel less like coincidence and more like the work knowing something the painter didn't yet — to be among the first ever uses of flash photography on a moving target. The earliest frozen moment. The first time light was used to stop time and look at something that would otherwise have kept moving. For an artist with a long history as a photographer, with a sustained and serious fascination with deer — painted and photographed, living and dead — the discovery was not surprising so much as inevitable. The right images find the right painter.

The deer themselves have always meant something specific. Innocence in the overlooked. The extraordinary ordinary — animals so common they are rarely looked at properly, so gentle they are almost invisible, carrying in their stillness and their dark eyes something that resists easy articulation but rewards sustained attention. They have been painted for as long as painting has existed. They have been photographed since almost the beginning of photography. They keep being made into art because they keep meaning something that nothing else quite means.

At 55×65 this canvas was a daunting undertaking — the largest and most ambitious work of its moment, requiring two years of sustained commitment to complete. It has been exhibited at Parnell Gallery, Auckland New Zealand — one of the country's most respected commercial galleries — where it held its own in the company of serious work and proved itself completely.

Three Deer is one of the most significant paintings in this collection. Perhaps in this body of work entire. It carries the weight of photography history, of personal obsession, of two years of looking and two years of painting and the particular satisfaction of a work that arrived exactly as it needed to.

The innocence of the overlooked. Seen now. Properly.

📦 Shipping & Details

• 55" × 65" original acrylic on canvas
• Exhibited at Parnell Gallery, Auckland NZ
• Signed and dated 2019
• Please contact us before purchasing to discuss shipping, stretching and installation options for this significant large scale work
• Certificate of authenticity included

One original. No reproductions. Two years. The first flash. The innocence of the overlooked.