Canada Geese Family

This is my first published original stone lithograph. The only other one I have done was a portrait of my wife, Birgit. It is an edition of two; her mother has one, and we have the other. I very much enjoyed drawing directly on the stone. Its 'tooth', or texture, gives a solid, warm feeling which brings to mind the ancient seas in which rare Bavarian limestone was formed. I worked gently at first, then rubbed more and more crayon onto the surface. It is possible to build up incredibly rich and velvety blacks.

This is why I chose this subject. In the evening light the water of the river was deep and inky, and the rich black of the necks of the geese seemed to shimmer. This river flows by the house where we used to live, and we were honoured to have a pair of Canadas nesting nearby. The parents were secretive about the nest, but when the goslings hatched, they were proudly brought to our lawn which ran to the water's edge. They cut the grass for us with their nibbling, and also, of course, fertilized it.

In this picture the young are about quarter grown. They are like a little flotilla with the alert gander bringing up the rear.