Collection: Birds

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.”  ― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

If our lives have themes and recurring characters, one of mine is birds. Though I don’t know them by name, I study them and understand their body language; I appreciate their awkward, curious tone and recognize their tentative, vigilant, inquisitive ways. Birds are often on the periphery of things; they fly, scamper and hop in and out of view, making cameo appearances, sweeping across the sky, mapped against a distant horizon. They are moving stitches on the seams of a fabric landscape, emerging and receding with a sense of ownership and timing, knowing that somehow they are part of holding things together. They are sentinels of wind and weather, markers of the seasons. In this series, I pulled the birds in from the distance, brought them to the foreground and filled the frame with their portraits. Whether blown off course or out of sorts, they are beautiful, tender, courageous keepers of the sky with legs too thin and wobbly for the task of their weight or the wind, from perches brief and temporary, they touch base with the ground for the chance to fly again.

The originals of these pieces were created with gouache on clayboard. Gouache is a water based paint that is similar to watercolor but contains more pigment. The paint is applied in thin layers using brushes and rags. These layers build to create texture, tone and saturation. Clayboard is a very absorbent surface, it takes many, many applications before the paint sits on the surface with command. Slowly, the portraits of the birds evolve from the coaxing of these materials, reluctant to say too much too soon. The media, like each bird, is curious and lovely to me. I'm happy to offer prints of this flock.