Innocent Until Proven Guilty ORIGINAL by Angus Gardner

The subject of my latest piece divides opinion. Loved, reviled, feared and misunderstood in equal measure. A friend to some, an enemy to others.  

Nocturnal omnivores, their favourite food are voles and rabbits but they also eat mice, rats, ferral pigeons, earthworms, beetles and fruit. A single adult will take several thousand voles and around 100 rabbits in a year, so they are ‘tolerated’ by most arable farmers as they help keep crop eating vermin in check. However, they are opportunists and will take new born lambs, hens, pheasants and partridges, hence an enemy to livestock farmers and shooting estates. 

Around a third of the UK's population now live in towns and cities. Some say that they are victims of urban sprawl and loss of habitat, seeking respite from relentless victimisation, others that they are opportunists who have migrated there willingly to take advantage of readily available food sources and to terrorise people. 

Hunted mercilessly for decades, even in areas where they benefit the countryside, simply for doing what they were born to do, they now live a more protected life, where proof of commercial loss is required in order to humanely destroy them. 

Their lives, history and urban myths about them are filled with light and darkness. 

The subject of my newest painting is of course one of the UK’s most recognisable mammals, the fox. 

In recognition of their chequered reputation, the forced or otherwise mass migration of a third of the population to town and cities, I wanted to try to capture that love/hate relationship we have with foxes in an impactful, thought provoking composition. 

My fox is painted not in its natural habitat but in an urban setting, sitting against a wall covered with graffiti. It sits illuminated on one side, its unquestionable beauty kissed in by street light. The other side is shrouded in darkness and shadows, hinting at their menace. 

The fox stares indignantly directly at the viewer, a wry look on its face. Did it just perform an opportunistic kill of the kind that have over the years given it a bad name? Prove it. 

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