'Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam' Print
The Brief Sum Of Life Forbids Us The Hope Of Enduring Long
-Titled after the poem of the same name by Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Locally printed A3 print on heavy gsm paper, original is ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.
Please note postage prices are taken directly from jerseypost.com, I am making no profit from postage. If you have any queries about your order, or postage for multiple items, please message me on Instagram (@caitlinfauve) before ordering, and I’ll do my best to help!
Statement on the print:
As some of you may know, I lost my two pet rats last year. They were my entire world, and a truly bottomless well of unconditional love; and as a result the grief has felt bottomless, too. This print was one of the many ways I explored that grief. I have sought after any way I could to immortalise my sweet loves.
There is a shared quality through grief, in each of the ways it finds us all, of wanting the world to pause. To honour just for a moment the disappearance of something so monumental to our own hearts’, and it can feel like a cruel punishment that we are not allowed that before the world moves on as it does. This print was an intricate, and slow process. It demanded, louder than the plod of the ever marching world, that I slow down, to consider every line and detail.
Aside from the obvious imagery of the rat as homage to my DVD and Asparagus, each element was chosen for its symbolism. The presence of the heart as, obviously, love, but its blunt severance is a shy attempt at looking directly at the violence of grief without flinching. The mantis completed the central piece, after listening to the ‘Mantodeology’ (Study of Mantids) episode of Allie Ward’s podcast, Ologies, and learning that:
‘Mantis comes from the Greek for a seer or a soothsayer or a prophet, which came from earlier Greek meaning ‘to be inspired’ and that root comes from passion and thinking.’
In other cultures, mantises have represented courage, persistence, and guides for those who were in need of direction in life or death. Finished with the border, inspired by Gothic Architecture which represented, amongst other things, a connection between Earth and the afterlife; this print was a plea to find the healing in time that I have been promised, without disconnecting myself from the love which I was fortunate enough to feel, despite it laying the foundations for this grief. It was an attempt at creating something, anything, beautiful out of so, so much pain. Above all, this print is for them. I hope I did them justice.
And a note on pricing:
I recognise that £40 is a lot of money to some, especially in this economy. Keeping my art accessible to as many people as possible is very important to me, but so is my belief that artists deserve to be fairly paid for their labour. This becomes increasingly difficult in a Western society which rapidly moves away from appreciating the arts, and the labour that goes into them. As much as it was a joy, I spent almost 50 hours working on sketches and test prints before I came to this final rendition; I am also very proud to say that they were printed locally by The Framing Workshop to a fantastic quality, but neither is this cheap. After print costs, not even including supplies for test prints, I am making an hourly wage of less than 90 pence from this print.
The Brief Sum Of Life Forbids Us The Hope Of Enduring Long
-Titled after the poem of the same name by Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Locally printed A3 print on heavy gsm paper, original is ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.
Please note postage prices are taken directly from jerseypost.com, I am making no profit from postage. If you have any queries about your order, or postage for multiple items, please message me on Instagram (@caitlinfauve) before ordering, and I’ll do my best to help!
Statement on the print:
As some of you may know, I lost my two pet rats last year. They were my entire world, and a truly bottomless well of unconditional love; and as a result the grief has felt bottomless, too. This print was one of the many ways I explored that grief. I have sought after any way I could to immortalise my sweet loves.
There is a shared quality through grief, in each of the ways it finds us all, of wanting the world to pause. To honour just for a moment the disappearance of something so monumental to our own hearts’, and it can feel like a cruel punishment that we are not allowed that before the world moves on as it does. This print was an intricate, and slow process. It demanded, louder than the plod of the ever marching world, that I slow down, to consider every line and detail.
Aside from the obvious imagery of the rat as homage to my DVD and Asparagus, each element was chosen for its symbolism. The presence of the heart as, obviously, love, but its blunt severance is a shy attempt at looking directly at the violence of grief without flinching. The mantis completed the central piece, after listening to the ‘Mantodeology’ (Study of Mantids) episode of Allie Ward’s podcast, Ologies, and learning that:
‘Mantis comes from the Greek for a seer or a soothsayer or a prophet, which came from earlier Greek meaning ‘to be inspired’ and that root comes from passion and thinking.’
In other cultures, mantises have represented courage, persistence, and guides for those who were in need of direction in life or death. Finished with the border, inspired by Gothic Architecture which represented, amongst other things, a connection between Earth and the afterlife; this print was a plea to find the healing in time that I have been promised, without disconnecting myself from the love which I was fortunate enough to feel, despite it laying the foundations for this grief. It was an attempt at creating something, anything, beautiful out of so, so much pain. Above all, this print is for them. I hope I did them justice.
And a note on pricing:
I recognise that £40 is a lot of money to some, especially in this economy. Keeping my art accessible to as many people as possible is very important to me, but so is my belief that artists deserve to be fairly paid for their labour. This becomes increasingly difficult in a Western society which rapidly moves away from appreciating the arts, and the labour that goes into them. As much as it was a joy, I spent almost 50 hours working on sketches and test prints before I came to this final rendition; I am also very proud to say that they were printed locally by The Framing Workshop to a fantastic quality, but neither is this cheap. After print costs, not even including supplies for test prints, I am making an hourly wage of less than 90 pence from this print.
The Brief Sum Of Life Forbids Us The Hope Of Enduring Long
-Titled after the poem of the same name by Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Locally printed A3 print on heavy gsm paper, original is ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.
Please note postage prices are taken directly from jerseypost.com, I am making no profit from postage. If you have any queries about your order, or postage for multiple items, please message me on Instagram (@caitlinfauve) before ordering, and I’ll do my best to help!
Statement on the print:
As some of you may know, I lost my two pet rats last year. They were my entire world, and a truly bottomless well of unconditional love; and as a result the grief has felt bottomless, too. This print was one of the many ways I explored that grief. I have sought after any way I could to immortalise my sweet loves.
There is a shared quality through grief, in each of the ways it finds us all, of wanting the world to pause. To honour just for a moment the disappearance of something so monumental to our own hearts’, and it can feel like a cruel punishment that we are not allowed that before the world moves on as it does. This print was an intricate, and slow process. It demanded, louder than the plod of the ever marching world, that I slow down, to consider every line and detail.
Aside from the obvious imagery of the rat as homage to my DVD and Asparagus, each element was chosen for its symbolism. The presence of the heart as, obviously, love, but its blunt severance is a shy attempt at looking directly at the violence of grief without flinching. The mantis completed the central piece, after listening to the ‘Mantodeology’ (Study of Mantids) episode of Allie Ward’s podcast, Ologies, and learning that:
‘Mantis comes from the Greek for a seer or a soothsayer or a prophet, which came from earlier Greek meaning ‘to be inspired’ and that root comes from passion and thinking.’
In other cultures, mantises have represented courage, persistence, and guides for those who were in need of direction in life or death. Finished with the border, inspired by Gothic Architecture which represented, amongst other things, a connection between Earth and the afterlife; this print was a plea to find the healing in time that I have been promised, without disconnecting myself from the love which I was fortunate enough to feel, despite it laying the foundations for this grief. It was an attempt at creating something, anything, beautiful out of so, so much pain. Above all, this print is for them. I hope I did them justice.
And a note on pricing:
I recognise that £40 is a lot of money to some, especially in this economy. Keeping my art accessible to as many people as possible is very important to me, but so is my belief that artists deserve to be fairly paid for their labour. This becomes increasingly difficult in a Western society which rapidly moves away from appreciating the arts, and the labour that goes into them. As much as it was a joy, I spent almost 50 hours working on sketches and test prints before I came to this final rendition; I am also very proud to say that they were printed locally by The Framing Workshop to a fantastic quality, but neither is this cheap. After print costs, not even including supplies for test prints, I am making an hourly wage of less than 90 pence from this print.