Luke Hardy Foxfires

Foxes are poets of beguilement. They are also masters of trespass. In Japanese yokai folklore, foxes even have the ability to take human form, entering our bodies through our dreams.

In some stories, foxes are faithful guardians, hence their presence as sentinels in Shinto shrines, but even there they may be infiltrators. I like the fact they steal across thresholds and defy our keep out signs. Art must also do that.

In nature foxes are quite solitary, but in myth they meet at night, their gatherings marked by clusters of little yellow-red lights called foxfires, or kitsunē-bi in Japanese. These are sometimes visible far off in the dark, appearing in pairs and about eye-height off the ground.