Rabbits and the Moon

“Rabbits and the Moon” (8″ x 8″ oil on raised panel)

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the Year of the Rabbit!

Having spent time in Taiwan and China, I have a fondness for the culture and wanted to share this little painting I just created. Way back in the mists of the dawn of this blog (OK it was 2009), I retold and illustrated the famous story of the Rabbit and the Moon goddess Chang-e – “Why there’s a Rabbit on the Moon”. It’s in multiple pages but here’s one of my favourites. Anyway, this new piece is completely different and yet perhaps the roots of this oil painting are in the elements of some of those illustrations I made using GIMP so long ago.

And yes I know that Chinese New Year starts on the new moon but this piece really wanted a full moon – artistic license!

(C) 2023 Hilary Farmer

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Rabbits at the gate …mandala

Rabbits at the gate (9″ x 9″)

Like most mandalas this one evolved from the centre …I am really not sure where the rabbits came from but I like them! They seemed to be confident of their own reason for being there though …and I love Tom’s poetic take on this one!

Solemn rabbits guard the grassy gates
protecting something secret at the centre
where cold Truth in Beauty’s cloak awaits
for the his lover now to gently enter:
stepping silently across the fields
toward the precious prize that will not yield
to blandishments nor lies nor flattery
but only to the gentlest of breeze
that wafts across the fields beneath the sky
upon a summer’s night: a golden moon
that swings through spaces where the stars are strewn,
cuts, a crescent scimitar on high.
The gates of grass swing open, rabbits dance
as Truth and Beauty share a secret glance.

image (c) 2018 Hilary Farmer
poem (c) 2018 TJ Radcliffe