An Invitation to Mercy
Notes about this work
In selected paintings from an ongoing series, a broken pheasant taxidermy acts as stand-in protagonist in an exploration of vulnerability and intimacy, crossed boundaries and relinquished ones, and persistence or collapse in the wake of failure and loss. Also included here are studies for a work-in-progress in which the remains of a crow found on the side of the road serves in an investigation of culpability in anonymous suffering.
I first started painting dead birds a long time ago when my cat brought a dead robin into my apartment. I didn’t wonder about it at the time, but made study after study, reveling in its complicated beauty. When someone challenged my use of the bird, asked if it was mere exploitation, I began to insert myself, actual or implied, into the paintings as a way to better understand my affinity. One thing I learned is that if I look closely enough, there is beauty in form itself, or maybe the beauty is in the attention paid. I’m still asking those questions. These paintings look back to that earlier work.
