When I lived abroad in the UK, I would often escape the city on weekends. I’d board a train with no grand plan, just a need to move, to feel distance, to breathe. The Cotswolds became my quiet refuge.

On those train rides, I found comfort in looking out the window—watching the landscape shift, the trees thinning with the season, and every now and then, the flicker of life beneath the hedgerows. Every so often, I’d catch a glimpse—just for a second—of a fox under the hedgerow. Darting. Pausing. Disappearing. Not staged. Not waiting. Wild and unbothered Foxes—almost always alone, almost always in motion. They weren’t posing for anyone. They were just being. Quick, wild, unafraid. There and gone.

That image stayed with me.

An Autumnal Fox is a memory and a metaphor. It is a story about change, solitude, and how we choose to meet the unseen forces that move through our lives. In the piece, a fox walks a narrow path, scarf trailing in the wind—not braced against it, but open to it. Above him, a larger fox watches—part guardian, part memory, part self. It’s unclear whether this fox is there to protect, to remember, or simply to witness.

The landscape around them is fragmented—made of carved lino, layered pencil marks, charcoal shadows, and the gentle press of acrylic leaves. Nature here is both familiar and abstract, like a dream that still smells of cold air and distant bonfires. The falling leaves are time. The wind is change. The path is yours.

“The fox always loved how the wind made his scarf dance.”

Because sometimes the wind is a test. Sometimes it’s a teacher. And sometimes it’s an invitation.

This piece is a reminder: the world will move around you, with or without your permission. You can close yourself off and endure it. Or you can loosen your grip, let the scarf fly, and walk on—aware, exposed, and still full of grace. You can let the wind cut through your coat, or you can let it play with your scarf.

“An Autumnal Fox”
By Renato Vitolo