The Gates of Spring

Far up north, Spring is a faint whisper in the wind. As southern lands bloom and blossom and burst with sudden life, the North is quiet, still, hushed beneath a blanket of glittering white. 

Who wakes up the land?  Who is strong enough to brave the icy winds and shivering snow to bring Spring to such a forbidding landscape?

It is said that every year, a spirit in the form of a white fox journeys to the South in search of a single blooming flower.  When she finds it, she whispers to it, telling it tales of a land trapped in ice, begging it to help her coax a new dawn from leaden, gray skies. If the flower agrees, she gently picks it and trudges back northwards, its stem clenched in her teeth. By the time she reaches the snow, the flower itself has faded and gone, but she herself is transformed. Her eyes glow with sunlight, and sparks fly from her white fur, the pinks and golds of shy hellebore and bleeding hearts. And as she walks back through the passage marking the northland, the Gates of Winter become the Gates of Spring, and flowers bloom all around.    

As always, the original piece will ship matted but unframed. Not only does glass make foxes and owls nervous, it’s also sometimes rather brutally mauled by the USPS, and nobody needs that!  

Image Size is 5.5 X 8″ and is painted with watercolor and white ink on Arches 140lb cold press paper