Nature & Animals Quote by Kit Williams

A dog, a rabbit, a hoop: three ordinary objects promoted to stand-ins for an orrery, that ornate clockwork model of the cosmos. Kit Williams is doing more than pointing out iconography. He’s tipping the reader to a deliberate swap: the universe rendered not as Enlightenment machinery but as a set of storybook clues, tactile and alive. The line is almost offhand, which is part of its sly power. It reads like a catalog note, yet it smuggles in the real thesis: this painting runs on symbolism and play, not on scientific display.

An orrery implies mastery - a world that can be miniaturized, predicted, explained. Replacing it with animals and a simple hoop moves the meaning from control to chase, from calculation to pursuit. The dog becomes appetite and loyalty; the rabbit, flight and anxiety; the hoop, a ring of containment or a portal you can pass through. Together they suggest motion and looping obsession, the way narratives circle their own secrets. If you know Williams’s broader cultural niche - puzzle-making, hidden messages, art as scavenger hunt - the substitution starts to feel like a manifesto. Don’t look for the mechanism; look for the trail.

Contextually, it also signals a negotiation with tradition. The orrery belongs to the old still-life vocabulary of knowledge and status. Williams replaces that prestige object with the vernacular: creatures and playthings that invite interpretation rather than reverence. The painting isn’t rejecting intellect; it’s re-routing it through wonder, making cosmology intimate enough to pet, flee from, or roll along the floor.