Every year I use the Quinn the Fox Christmas card as an opportunity to test out new ideas but the sentiment behind the illustration is almost always the same: namely to ask you, the viewer, to suppress the cynical tendencies that dominate the other 11 months of the year and to open your eyes to the magic of the season. When you’re an adult, Christmas Spirit is hard work – what was once a raging fire has now diminished into a mere spluttering flame, as the embers of wonderment fade into ashes of crushing reality; the suffocating crowds, the awkward office Christmas parties and more often than not in London, rain. ⠀
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This year’s card is inspired by a girl I saw as I was leaving Fortnum and Mason a couple of weeks ago. Entranced by their glittering Christmas window displays, the little girl stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the rain to admire them. As she gestured to her mother of what she had seen, her mother, with about a dozen bags of Christmas shopping in her arms and probably keen to get out of the pouring rain, nonchalantly acknowledged her with a brief glance and urged her daughter to get a move on. Plagued by practicality that must unfortunately come to us all, she was no longer able to see what her daughter had seen.⠀
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Some may say that I’m becoming sentimental in my old age and perhaps it’s true, but for me, the purpose of Quinn the Fox is similar to Jacque Prevert’s lyre bird – a guiding spirit that bestows upon us the key back into the kingdom of childhood wonderment – even if it’s only for a momentary glimpse. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and in the spirit of keeping your eyes open, I’ve hidden my cat Bounty somewhere in this illustration. Can you find him?
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This year’s card is inspired by a girl I saw as I was leaving Fortnum and Mason a couple of weeks ago. Entranced by their glittering Christmas window displays, the little girl stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the rain to admire them. As she gestured to her mother of what she had seen, her mother, with about a dozen bags of Christmas shopping in her arms and probably keen to get out of the pouring rain, nonchalantly acknowledged her with a brief glance and urged her daughter to get a move on. Plagued by practicality that must unfortunately come to us all, she was no longer able to see what her daughter had seen.⠀
⠀
Some may say that I’m becoming sentimental in my old age and perhaps it’s true, but for me, the purpose of Quinn the Fox is similar to Jacque Prevert’s lyre bird – a guiding spirit that bestows upon us the key back into the kingdom of childhood wonderment – even if it’s only for a momentary glimpse. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and in the spirit of keeping your eyes open, I’ve hidden my cat Bounty somewhere in this illustration. Can you find him?
