Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back. The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act. For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body. The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser. Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology. Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.

Finding out AI companies are chewing through - literally, they’re pulping and burning them as they go - millions of books often including 1/1s and old texts that cannot be reprinted

what. the ACTUAL FUCK THIS IS A DYSTOPIA SOMEBODY WAKE ME UP

i am half blind. on my eighteenth birthday, a freak accident left me with a slashed retina, a temporary eye patch and a permanent loss of 86% of vision in my right eye. i don't talk about it much, and apart from the inability to drive a car, placing my notebook next to the desk instead of on it once in a while, and making me truly abysmal at beer pong, it has not impacted my life much.

Did Zane and Wake fuck nasty style? 😏

This is the second time I've seen a video of this technique and this explanation is so clear! It does use more fabric than English paper piecing (EPP) but you end up with a double sided hexagon so don't have to source fabric for the backing.

I saw this video yesterday and was seized with the need to try it out immediately. Lookit my cute lil' hexagon baby!!

Hexagon quilt tutorial video by tiktok user camelscrafts. Method: