Birds on the Brain - Esther
I was an odd child. For a long time I was obsessed with birds. I’d even see
the word “bird” written in a book or magazine & I could feel my stomach
tighten with excitement. I would read about them, watch them, look at pictures
of them, write about them, watch TV programmes about them. I’d be thinking
about birds all the time. I’d observe the different types, how one species
related to another, work out what the size comparisons would be from
measurements recorded in books, I grew to recognise their silhouettes &
flight patterns. I was never great at recognising calls or eggs but what I did
learn, I never forgot.
I can still catch the tiniest glimpse of the tiniest bird & usually identify
it from features like these. After a lifetime of watching them, you just know.
I don’t make as much time for this particular passion these days (I still try with the calls) although elements of
the fixation still hang around. When I’ve been abroad, I like to check the
Latin names alongside the common names of local birds to find out whether they
are indeed the same as the ones we get in the UK. As well as finding out what
they call them in other countries. It’s a satisfying & fairly wholesome
geekery that does no harm & it still excites me.
What I also do - have always done - is draw them. The poetic side of birds
& man’s obsession with flight was never of any interest but when I’d write
about them or note observations as a child, I’d make pictures of them as well.
That went too for birds I’d like to
have seen, where I’d draw from photos onto blank pages & colour them badly.
(I recall a particularly awful drawing of a frigate bird, coloured in with
bright felt pens & presumably dreadful proportions).
Nowadays, birds figure widely in my artwork & I like to think I’ve
improved. Bits of birds feature too, such as their skulls & feathers. In
these works, birds tend to represent thoughts or dreams, as if the mind’s
taking flight as opposed to the physical or mechanical attributes of flying.
But I never realise at the time.
Whether on symbolic or aesthetic grounds & whether as background
participants or the main event, artists have always portrayed birds. I’m sticking to my comfort zone
artistically this week with some illustrative & painterly works by recurrent
favourites. Some of them have been with me since childhood.
Peter Scott was
an English ornithologist whose life’s work was in conservation of wildlife
(specifically birds) & preservation of marshlands. He set up the Wildfowl
& Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge & as a child, it seemed to me as exotic
as the moon. I was thrilled as an adult to visit, even though (as the name
suggests) it was very wet indeed &
all I saw were some redshanks, a sprinkling of moorhens & a coot. Peter
Scott was also involved with establishing the Worldwide Fund for Nature &
even designed the iconic panda logo. His paintings were so accomplished & evocative
to my young eyes, even if they were only of a bunch of ducks taking off into
flight. Or indeed White-Fronts Whiffling
Down Onto Flood Water (1988).
One of my
childhood favourite books was Aesop’s Fables as illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
I was never remotely interested in the fables (except the fox who lost his tail
– you see examples of that fox’s attitude in everyday life all the time), as they
were rather smug & a bit too judgemental for my taste. No-one did a creepy
tree like Arthur though & no-one anthropomorphised creatures more
effectively & with more expressive character. On examining The Owl & the Birds (c. 1912), we
can see that he had developed expert shorthand for the differing feather, feet
& beak textures. It’s an entirely convincing depiction of a meeting:
there’s a variety of opinions, scepticism, outright contempt. We’ve all been
there.
From Rackham’s
detailed & busy piece, we swoop off to the lone bird in Aubrey Beardsley’s The
Pestilence. Solitude, loneliness & death are
all expressed in a single (perhaps) vulture, circling overhead; it’s a bleak
& simply conveyed scene. But it
takes an enormous amount of knowledge, discipline to develop such quality of
line & simplicity of composition. Like all artistic endeavours, it takes a
lot of work to make it look effortless. & many times I’ve filched those
dots around the skull & cape for my own artwork.
Pablo Picasso’s
1949 lithograph Dove is another staggeringly simple example - it can
look at first glance as if it is a black & white photograph. Picasso the
Man is being reappraised these days & as unpleasant as his personal life
apparently could be, there are many reasons he has been regarded as a great
artist by so many for so long. The poetic beauty of Dove comes from the
unadorned composition, the lack of distraction & his complete focus on the
subject. The purity of the dove in its creation as well as the symbolic aspect
we bring to the work makes it for me one of the most beautiful depictions of
our avian friends.
Not only is The
Goldfinch (Carel Fabritius, 1654) one of my most beloved paintings, it is
perhaps the most poignant. The finch looks as if it’s about to make a sound or shift
about with those jumpy, nervous movements small birds make, its head twitching
this way & that, looking for danger everywhere at once, its feet shuffling
along the perch. As loaded with symbolism as the image of the tiny, chained
creature is, the metaphor could be too much. But the beauty of the bird, so
perfectly yet impressionistically rendered & with such sensitivity brands
this painting a masterpiece.
Finally, an honourable
mention goes to Harry Clarke, whose 1916 The
Storks illustration (for Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales) is another unusual composition of simple perfection. I
finally saw nesting storks (& the range of odd places they choose to lay
their eggs) for the first time last year in Switzerland. It was not lost on me
that Harry had died only about 60 miles away from the spot in 1931…
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