The Liminal Hour

There is an hour I keep returning to.

It falls between Blue Hour and full dark. The sky still holds a little light. The path through the trees is still there, but you cannot quite see where it leads yet.

I do some of my best work in that hour. Not because the lighting is practical, but because something in me relaxes when the day stops asking questions. The in-between places have always been where I find the truest things.

When I sat down to paint Chapter 9 of Moonrise Menagerie, I knew almost immediately that he lived there. The Ember Wolf. He moves through the Carpathian forest at twilight, his body lit from within, carrying sparks in his fur like something between a forest fire and a wish. I spent a long time getting that glow right. Getting it to feel alive without being alarming and warm without being obvious. That kind of light has its own personality.

He has a particular quality of attention in his eyes, but his body is where the story lives. He is entirely present in a moment that could tip either way, and he seems completely fine with that. I found myself a little envious of him, honestly.

That feeling of being somewhere in the middle of something important, moving through carefully, trusting the path is still there even when you cannot quite see it, is what the whole painting ended up being about. I did not know that when I started. I only knew it when I stepped back and looked.

That is usually how it goes.

The Work That Knows

Art has always asked me to live in the liminal. A painting is never quite finished until it suddenly is. A collection never coheres until the moment it already has, and you were the last to notice. The work knows what it is before you do. Your job is to stay out of the way long enough to let it arrive.

Following the Wolf

The Ember Wolf took three weeks from first sketch to the final Procreate layering. In the early sketches he was mid-run, urgent, moving toward something. But somewhere in the inking stage he slowed down. He went still. And I followed him.

If you are a patron, thank you for having your September mailer in your hands by now. Chapter 10 is already in progress. If you have been thinking about joining, now is a lovely time. Moonrise Menagerie is a 12-part illustrated series, one chapter each month, with an enchanted mailer to your door. We are nine chapters in and three still to come.

The wolf is at the treeline if you want to follow him.

Therese Tucker is the artist and founder of Starthistle & Quartz, an illustration and surface pattern studio in the Pacific Northwest.