Fi Webster's photos with the keyword: animals

Cut-paper collage created for Kollage Kit theme: "Museums and Galleries." This one's an experiment—my first 11" x 17" (28 x 43 cm) collage on fiberboard. The water pictures are details from photos by Rebecca Resinski. The background behind them is actual wood—thin-sliced cherry. The Asian sun bear is a drawing by Amelia Bauer. The galloping horse is from a painting by Charles Knight. That's a real human being whose face is peeking up over the edge: it's a painted portrait of a man with hirsutism (aka lycanthropy). Except for the fuzzy white dog on the right, all the fur people are undomesticated. It seemed weird to me that the vampire bat is purple, but then just today I saw a photo of another species of black bat, hanging in clusters in a cave, and they looked purple, too.

This is an attempt at illustrating the opening lines of Rainer Maria Rilke's long poem, "The Eighth Elegy." After Stephen Mitchell's translation into English is the original German. With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open. Only our eyes are turned backward, and surround plant, animal, child like traps, as they emerge into their freedom. We know what is really out there only from the animal's gaze; for we take the very young child and force it around, so that it sees objects—not the Open, which is so deep in animals' faces. Free from death. We, only, can see death; the free animal has its decline in back of it, forever, and God in front, and when it moves, it moves already in eternity, like a fountain. Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene. Nur unsre Augen sind wie umgekehrt und ganz um sie gestellt als Fallen, rings um ihren freien Ausgang. Was draußen ist , wir wissens aus des Tiers Antlitz allein; denn schon das frühe Kind wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts Gestaltung sehe, nich das Offne, das im Tiergesicht so tief ist. Frei von Tod. Ihn sehen wir allein; das freie Tier hat seinen Untergang stets hinter sich und vor sich Gott, und wenn es geht, so gehts in Ewigkeit, so wie die Brunnen gehen.