Greag Mac a' tSaoir
Ealaíontóir – Artist
The Hare’s Tale
A death
About a year ago, driving home, I saw the car in front of me clip something. There was a lay-by I could pull into so I stopped and walked back along the roadside, cars careering past. It didn’t take long to find the hare, thrown into the ditch by the car that had spun it from the road. It was still alive, its chest pumping, its eyes flared. I thought I might be able to save it but as I lifted it I saw that one of its back legs was pointing in the wrong direction and there was blood leaking everywhere. By the time I got it to the car it was dead. I put it in the boot and brought it home, thinking that I might paint it, to tell its story and make its place in the world something tangible.
An entombment
As I painted it I started to dwell on how serene it looked for all that it was broken and bloodied. I built a cairn of sorts over it on an old garden slab down the side of the shed so that the rats wouldn’t carry away its bones and as the days past I found my self thinking about it and I knew that as the flesh fell away the broken bones would fall away and it would tell a much clearer story of its grim end.
A resurrection
Exactly a year after I built the tomb around it I uncovered it again. Some of the bones had fallen in unexpected ways and some had moved far farther than I would have thought possible but it was the bones of its pelvis and back legs that spoke most clearly of the violence of its demise. I painted the hare a second time.
With that second painting complete I set about itemising the bone fragments, 535 pieces, some no bigger than specks of dust. I may have missed some in what remained of the rotted down carcass but what remained I decided to try and coax one final act of transcendence from by making bone black pigment. I’ll tell you about that another day. For now contemplate the hare’s tale.
Greag Mac a' tSaoir 