Faulty View

Faulty View

"Faulty View" - mixed media on paper, 21 x 21.  Available here and at Artfinder.


Claude, you have a faulty view of my kin,
Our Corvus family is not responsible
For foot-tracks around your eyes
Or measuring a straight flying distance.
We would not stoop to the metaphor
abasement, such as ‘eating human.

- W.K. GOURLEY

​The crows continue to roost in the studio.

Sketches and paintings and inspiration images and feathers. 

Rocky, our porch crow, looms large every day.  We recognize his voice, admire his demonstration of territorial ownership, leave him offerings of nuts, popcorn, corn on the cob and eggs.

We've become those people.  The ones who wander with pockets filled with peanuts, chucking and clucking and calling the crows.  And now, often, the crows call us.  Or swoop silently over our shoulders to land in a tree limb ahead, waiting for the morning offerings.  There is great joy in this, for us.  Making contact, forming recognition, learning each other's ways.

It has become a lovely pause in a tumultuous world.  Our eyes and ears are atuned to the crows, leaving little space for news and chaos.  I think of it fondly as crow meditation. :)

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About the art:  this piece is painted on one of my new favorite substrates - craft paper.  Once gesso'd, this paper takes a beating and forms delicious textured wrinkles and warps, creating an overall leathery texture and heft on a thin plane.  

Beginning with black gesso'd paper taped to a board, drawing the bird with white charcoal and then adding water and paint to form a value sketch.  Continuing to add the requisite 80 million layers of acrylic paint, this time choosing a very dark, limited palette.  Using the sprayer bottle, squeegee and rubber wedge to force the paper to wrinkle and warp, enjoying the way subsequent light layers cling to the high points in the texture and leave the valleys dark.  Resisting the urge to overly define all but eye and feet.