In the most objective sense, this painting series depicts endangered birds indigenous to North America.
I paint these birds slowly, feather by feather, in the patient medium of gouache. Each portrait is an act of close attention — the only honest response I know to make to a creature in the process of disappearing. These paintings are named after lines that older poets gave to other birds; I am trying to place them inside the long tradition of human listening — to insist that they too belong to the chorus of what we have loved, sung about, and are now at risk of losing.
I paint these birds slowly, feather by feather, in the patient medium of gouache. Each portrait is an act of close attention — the only honest response I know to make to a creature in the process of disappearing. These paintings are named after lines that older poets gave to other birds; I am trying to place them inside the long tradition of human listening — to insist that they too belong to the chorus of what we have loved, sung about, and are now at risk of losing.
These small paintings are not warnings. They are introductions. Look here. This one is still alive.
