Fantastic Animals

Description for blind and low-vision visitors

Four small horizontal canvases are mounted edge to edge inside a single wooden box frame, two in the upper row and two in the lower. The wood is dark and stained, with a chamfered inner face that casts a shallow shadow onto the canvases. All four are painted on bare, unprimed canvas, and the warm off-white weave is left exposed as the ground of every scene. In the upper left panel a serpent-like creature arcs across the canvas, its body scaled in purple, wine and blue and covered with concentric rosettes, its long head raised to the upper right with an open red beak. A smaller bird flies above it, wings outstretched and patterned in brown and blue. Tufts of orange and green leaves fan out at the right, and rounded hills in brown, violet and green close the lower corner. The upper right panel holds a second creature, its head blue and yellow with an open mouth and a row of white teeth, its pink and purple body ringed with rosettes and curled around a large green plant with broad lobed leaves. A speckled bird perches at the left and another flies in at the upper right. Three insects with long pointed wings, dotted in orange and purple, rest on the plant and along the lower edge. Blades of orange and green foliage rise on both sides. In the lower left panel a large insect is seen from above, its wings filled with concentric undulating bands of green, blue, ochre and cream. The head is red and blue with two concentric eyes and a pair of curved horns, and long dotted legs reach out to either side. Purple flowers hang from a stem across the top and orange rosette flowers are scattered to the right and below. The lower right panel shows two birds on an ochre branch. The upper one has a red wing bearing yellow and orange stars, a dark speckled body, a blue neck and a crest that opens into a fan of fine plumes. The lower one turns its head to the right, its tail spreading as a fan of purple, blue and cream. Green fan-shaped shrubs grow at the foot of the branch.