Black Rabbit of Inlé

(Glyph Drawing No. 8)

Charcoal, oil stick and graphite on paper

19 x 24 inches

Geometric abstraction forms a tangram-like rabbit or pair of rabbits, rendered in deep black charcoal and oil stick. The work evokes the Black Rabbit of Inlé — Watership Down’s mythic grim reaper of the rabbit world and a haunting, mystical image from childhood. Rabbits have an enduring presence in myths, parables and symbolic systems across cultures. Like the snake in an earlier drawing, the rabbit has long served as a potent signifier, representing life, death, fertility, transformation or trickery. One can imagine its function as a foundational element in a visual language of symbols.

The composition continues the balance between formalism and playful post hoc representational recognition, inviting viewers to consider how shapes can suggest meaning without prescribing it, while engaging the dynamic between signifier and the signified.

Wide shot of Black Rabbit of Inlé (Glyph Drawing No. 8) hanging on a studio pegboard, showing scale and texture of the geometric black rabbit abstraction.
Detail of Black Rabbit of Inlé (Glyph Drawing No. 8), showing an even, sandy, tactile black charcoal texture, oil stick laid on by a brayer, interrupted by a sharp white shapes of the underlying paper with faint graphite grid lines.