“I shall sing a song of sixpence…”
“…four & twenty Blackbirds baked in a pie”….
“the Golden Bird”
“the Foundling Bird”
“the Fitcher’s Bird”
“the Canary Prince”
“the Nightingale & the Rose”
Majikal symbolism of birds in faerie tales goes on & on. It has become apparent to me that in an attempt to connect with the Divine; we project that longing onto this feathered creature of flight.
True, the proverbial quest for the “Blue Bird” is fraught with spiritual soul searching & many of these tales from childhood have the conspicuous happy ending, BUT…I believe that in some selfish & maniacal way we also want to seize or “own” that treasure.
The irony of the situation, however is that once contained… the majik is gone. In myth & majik, a dead bird is typical of disillusionment, of the loss of innocence and/or of transformation from the naive to the wiser…So here, capturing the BlueBird is a symbolic movement into the harsher realities of life.
My own fascination & enchantment with this winged thing is unmistakable in my two latest pieces… Cat’s Cradle & The BlueBird.
Cat’s Cradle kept me in memory of the string game I played as a child, and the tangled mess that inevitably would follow the first well placed threadings!
But the process of composing “theBlueBiRd” held a devious charm for me. I carved a window-box frame & painted it to look like stonework from another era. I wanted to convey the timelessness of this sick obsession & that a contagious fetish possessed not only the captor himself, but his little pet as well! Here is a photo of the prep work!
