Hibernation

Morris Graves was profiled in Life magazine in 1954, the year he painted Hibernation, as one of four mystical painters of the Pacific Northwest. Graves had studied Zen Buddhism in the early 1930s and for much of his life drew on East Asian philosophies as a way to understand man’s relationship with the world of nature. In Hibernation, a mink curls up within glowing concentric orbs that resemble mandalas, the form that represents the universe and the sacred spaces of the Hindu and Buddhist religions.

Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014

Graves combined nature with Asian philosophy in Hibernation. This painting depicts an adult mink resting in a fetal position. It is surrounded by a glowing egg, or “Yoga mandala,” which, according to Graves, “blooms” as a result of the mink’s “intense isolation.” Hibernation manifests the artist’s displeasure with the industrial world and his appreciation for rural solitude and the spellbinding quiet of nature.

Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009