A Couple of Crow Paintings

I don't really like crows; their intelligence has no benevolence in it. They watch us all the time, but they offer no wisdom. And if you park your car at night under some trees where a flock has hunkered down for the night, the gooey white stuff they put out will take away any romantic notions you may have of them as jokesters or prophets or portents of good luck. The only fate they foretell is a disgusting dilemma of how to make it to your fouled car without stepping in something that suits the term "excretion".

Crows were at first a challenge for me to paint, and I've done several of them. The most popular one was the second I did, where I was inspired to put a beaded necklace on him. It just seemed like an interesting motif: I had the black background of the crow's neck to make the beads stand out. But there was no overt meaning. At best, I was trying to portray a series of riddles: why would a bird so clever and furtive wear something flashy like that, and where did the necklace come from and how did he get it on?

My favorite painting with a crow wearing a necklace is called The Thief. In a masterpiece by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, a woman is holding a balance in a dusky room and weighing pearls. My painting tried to portray the same scene, but with a crow who has sneaked into the workshop after the woman has left, and is now wearing a necklace of gold beads. The crow knows he's being watched by someone, and he has turned his head to evaluate this snoop before he makes his next move. My favorite part? The gold streak on the picture frame behind him.

Like most people these days, I am in a bit of turmoil with what's going on. So, I picked a theme that might express that: yes, another crow with a gold necklace, this time in a big fuyu persimmon tree after all its leaves have fallen. But it's a little more complicated than that: he's got some buddies, all with necklaces. His depicts what gold beads worn on a crow's neck should look like. For sure, not a ring of round yellow nuggets. Most of this painting is muted, but there are tens of colors at work.

It took a while to make this piece because I didn't have a single reference; I had to combine bits and pieces of many images. As always, after I finish a painting, I have no idea what I'll do next.