Possum Art: Because The Forest Belongs to Them Too
An Artist's Note
Where I Would Want to Be If I Were a Possum
I wanted this one to have the moss, color, light, and attention that an underappreciated animal rarely gets.
Country neighbors
Growing up in the country means growing up with possums.
I grew up in the country, so possums were always around. They belonged to the nighttime world just beyond the door.
My aunt always kept cat food on her porch. If you stepped outside after dark, there was a good chance you would scare the bejezus out of a poor possum—and it would scare the bejezus out of you right back. That is still one of the first things I think about when I think of them: two creatures surprised to find each other in the porch light.
I once tried my best to save a litter of babies after their mother was killed in the road. They were impossibly small, and I have never forgotten how vulnerable they were. After that, it became even harder to see a possum as a joke, a nuisance, or something ugly.
I have always thought the pale ones were especially cool. Strange-looking, maybe—but strange in a way that deserves a closer look.
Possums are neat, misunderstood, and underappreciated animals. In the United States and Canada, the Virginia opossum is our only marsupial. That alone should earn it a little respect.
To me, the possum feels especially Appalachian: different, stubbornly itself, and completely at home where porch light gives way to woods. I can understand why people take it as a kind of token animal.
The setting was easy
I put the possum where I would want to be.
That meant a mossy log under broad leaves, in a grove full of lichen, fungi, vines, and forest-floor color. Mossy logs are my jam. If I could spend all day exploring them, I would.
Lakehouse Goods color
Color gets to play a little more here.
Lakehouse Goods artwork gives me more freedom with color. I am still looking for the feeling of being there, but I am not trying to reproduce every color exactly as it appeared in one photograph or one moment.
For me, it is about the nervous-system response and the harmony. The opossum is pale cream and gray with a pink nose and tail. Around it, the woods move through luminous yellow-green, mint, moss, teal, warm ochre, and plum shadow. The color is playful, but the animal, log, leaves, fungi, and forest structure still have to belong together.
I spend a lot of time in the woods looking for and identifying plants, fungi, and the small things growing around fallen trees. The finished place is a combination of observation, memory, research, and the freedom to let color carry the feeling.
Opossum on the Mossy Log
One animal, three ways to keep looking.
The complete artwork is available as a soft wall tapestry, a glossy art puzzle, and an unframed Lakehouse Goods Art Print on smooth archival matte paper.
