Encounter

I want us to frequently sit alone in the black of night, so to rely entirely on our senses to guide us back to communing with the natural world. The snapping branches, the leaves swaying in the breeze, the unidentified animal calmly sensing you as you sense them, the quiet flap of bats and owls, the grunts of raccoons, the distant coyote yips, and rhythmic crunching of four-legged footsteps passing by, the natural flow of instinct and survival, unimpeded by human hand.

Initially started in 2020 as a vision of encountering and communing with a coyote in the dark, my goal for this project is to build a large hand-drawn animation that includes as many Canadian wild animals as possible.

This analog animation is created by drawing each frame on paper, scanning each drawing, then digitally assembling the scans into the animation you see here. The 2022 version (above) consists of over 600 individual original drawings.

When I present Encounter outdoors at night with a projector, I retitle the piece Encounter Encounter.

The 2022 update is thanks in part to the encouragement one of my long time favourite conservation organizations: The Fur Bearers. I was fortunate to be selected for their first ever Arts Scholarship program. Here’s a Q&A we hosted about the project on their blog.