Tierboskat

"Tierboskat and Naguiltjie are linocuts of the shadows of a roadkill serval and nightjar melting into the ground. The twilight call of a nightjar always brings me back to the granite hills of the Mpumalanga Lowveld. Naguiltjies are generally quite shy and keep away from people. The print is a tribute to this often-heard but rarely-seen, elaborately plumaged bird. Seeing them up close is remarkable. They look like strange tiny owls with the body of a hawk. Nightjars are particularly susceptible to being hit by cars as they often sit on the road at night and are slow to fly off.

Tierboskat is a print of a serval. A scarce and threatened species that also often slinks by unseen. They are attracted to roads where they might find rodents hit by cars to score an easy meal. They move fast and are the same colour as the winter grass, making them vulnerable to collisions with nighttime traffic. The animal in this print had been hit by a car on the N4 near Delmas and had been dead for quite some time when I spotted it. The grass next to the road was recently burnt, and the serval's fur was singed in places, thus blurring the separation between animal and veld. These prints capture that striking, transient moment when their brilliance hovers before being lost forever." -Simon Attwood, 2023