Neoteny
The one that never grows up.
The axolotl reaches sexual maturity without ever leaving its larval body. It breeds as a child. It stays that way until it dies.
These are the still paintings. The figure at rest, cropped close, doing nothing. Bright, calm, and slightly wrong in a way that takes a moment to locate.
Regrowth
The one that comes back.
Cut a limb from an axolotl and it grows back — bone, muscle, nerve, skin — with no scar to mark where the break was. It will do this as many times as you ask.
These paintings are about the seam that isn't there. Limbs mid-return, parts that don't quite match the body receiving them, repairs that worked and are still visible to anyone who knows to look.
Fifty Left
Fifty paintings. Then it stops.
Surveys put the wild population between fifty and a thousand. The lower figure is the one researchers keep quoting.
This series will contain fifty paintings and then stop. One for each animal that may still be out there. They are the emptiest works the studio makes — the figure small in a large field, further away each time.