Bird Flag, Corvid Empire

60 x 65 cm, acrylic and oil on canvas

I like painting ravens, crows, magpies - the corvidae family of birds, big, beautiful, and astoundingly clever. They alight on our balcony sometimes but rarely stay long enough to have their photos taken. After painting a few studies I felt like representing these birds in a rather different way. This idea collided with an altogether different train of thought: the icons of empire. Flags, really.

Here we have one of the flags of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which used to encompass the land in which I now live. You'll see these double-headed birds all over human history. It is useful for representing BIG power, because it says, "I not only control this, but I also control that."

This is the sign for a gas station down the street. I used to walk past it and think about how humans hove historically loved to add extra legs, heads, wings, powers, or whatever is at hand to their monsters and gods. I for one think this is the best sign I've ever seen for a gas station. Unfortunately another company took over the station and now the sign displays a boring green "MOL". The new company is Hungarian, if we needed any more connection with my theme, here.

I had these things in mind when I splashed out my underpainting in acrylics and then thin oils. It was to be done entirely in black and white because I hadn't done that before, and I think that decision helped the painting draw me into darker directions. There should be symmetries, but they should be corrupted. I didn't really intend for more animals to inhabit the space, but they came anyways. Even after I finished people were pointing out creatures I hadn't noticed. Even though I spent almost two years looking at it, working on it, erasing and restructuring whole quadrants, I can set it up in front of me and patiently wait for new things to creep out of the darkness.