THE PAINTINGS
Birds.
Especially crows.
Lots of crows.
…Mainly red crows.
What gives?
The answer is, I really don’t know. They just arrived and moved themselves into scenarios that I have been treating in paint and graphite for years…nature in her many manifestations.
I had painted the night sky for several years to better understand the cosmos. I had drawn icebergs against the night sky to better understand the relationship between ice, sky and sea. I drew a large series of lightning strikes in graphite to better understand that phenomena and its effect on the atmosphere and light. I did a series of paintings in 2009-2010 about fire. These were all efforts in my continuing examination of natural phenomena.
Some of the fire paintings included images of crows in very difficult situations- burning atmosphere and falling black rain. That’s how the birds first emerged…as a metaphor for what was happening to life on earth. I became interested in the birds as life forms in the natural environments that I had been depicting for years. The crows presented themselves as the next thing to examine.
In that process, something magical happened. Something akin to Magical Realism; an enhanced sense of being for these birds and their world. They needed trees. The trees presented an altered reality. What was going on?
I find birds fascinating. I observe and photograph birds. I am intrigued by crows especially. I have read extensively about them and I just dig them as subjects. I have observed crows in their daily rituals for years. While living in Santa Monica I watched large groups of crows migrate past my home on a daily basis. They went southeast in the evening in a very clear flight path, and they flew back northwest in the morning. Their migrations moved laterally with the movement of the sun seasonally. Fascinated by the pattern, I followed them to see what they were doing, and where they were going. Crows are so smart, so intriguing
In addition to crows, I paint herons, because they are in my world here in Colorado and they too, are spectacular.
So, here they are, and they have me mystified. I wish I could tell you more of what it’s all about, but alas, no. I guess they have done their job after all.
Magic.
Dick Carter
08/ 2013