Details
While I drifted the outlet of the Agulukpak River and swung streamers to arctic char, my buddy crossed the lake with his guests to fish for northern pike in a shallow grassy bay. The idea was that we’d meet for lunch, and plans would be made for the rest of the day over fried fillets of freshly caught char and pike.
When my friends motored up to the lunch spot, there was a good-sized moose rack occupying most of the boat; they’d found it along the shore in the pike slough and brought it back to show us.
Bull moose shed their antlers each winter, so this specimen met his demise sometime in the fall, either to a hunter or perhaps a brown bear.
We placed the monarch’s crown in shallow water to clean away some mud and grime, and I took a few photographs, which I’ve painted several times as a Memento Mori, a Latin term meaning ‘remember you will die’. The use of a skull motif is an ancient practice of reflection on our mortality that goes back to Socrates.
Painted on location in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska in summer 2025.
