My oil paintings from this year, some carrying heavy “2020 energy,” so to speak.
From top to bottom: “Fading Light” Blue Jay, 12″x24″ oil on panel “Drifting Into Evening” Crow, 16″x12″ oil on panel “Instability” Snowy Egret, 24″x12″ oil on panel Detail of “Instability” “Hallowed” Hermit Thrush, 16″x12″ oil on panel “Northern Cardinal in Dogwood” 16″x20″ oil on panel “Sky and Shadow” Crow 5″x7″ oil on panel “Crow Portrait” 7″x5″ oil on panel “Goldfinch with Lilac Spires” American Goldfinch, 8″x10″ oil on panel “Red-Bellied Woodpecker” 5″x7″ oil on panel
“Two For Mirth”, American Crows. 6"x14" oil on stretched linen. For a group exhibition at West End Gallery in Corning NY, which opens Friday (11/16/2018)! I’m lucky enough to have a family unit of crows that live here, and we enjoy seeing them in this old ash that we call “the crow tree” behind my home.
imagine you’re a fifth-grade teacher and one day a crow just flies into your classroom, steals some food, sits on some kid’s head, and shouts “fuck off”
What asshole snitched!?
No, the story is even better than that! This crow lives outdoors, but he has a human family that rescued and raised him as a chick. He is highly vocal because he talks to his humans regularly.
They have some judgy neighbors though, who didn’t love foulmouthed Cosmo, and who secretly captured him and took him to an animal rescue. He was eventually released far from from home.
When he came to this school? When he walked through all the classrooms telling the kids “what’s up?” and “I’m fine”? He was looking for someone who could help him find his family.
“He went to the only kid I know in Allen Dale and knocked on the door,” Shattuck said. That was the fifth-grade classroom where Cosmo found snacks. That night, when the kid relayed the story of the talking crow to his father, the father called Shattuck. Colpron went the next day to collect Cosmo.
Cosmo’s home now, he was welcomed back and fed sardines, he doesn’t visit the traitor neighbors anymore, and those kids got to take part in a wonderful story about friendship, corvid intelligence, and Christmas magic.
