April 1st 2008 ~
It's hard to describe the unbelievable grief I've experienced since discovering the dead raven. Still warm to the touch, I walked home in the cold with it gently tucked under one arm. Along my street as darkness fell, house lights extinguished one by one, and the raven did in turn. I knew it was already dying and there was no hope of saving it, but I was compelled to take it home and let it die in dignity. Here in the countryside humans still nail half-dead crows to fence posts as if crucified by their hatred of all that is wild and untamed. I couldn't let that happen to this raven.
This afternoon I documented its wounds, and then lovingly documented its beauty. I cleaned the blood off its beak and straightened its torn feathers. I then wrapped it gently in layers of raw cotton canvas and gave it a proper funeral. We buried it beneath the three glorious pine trees at the rear of our land. When everything else is gone, those pine trees will still stand tall over the woodlands this raven once called home.
Since discovering the raven, I've found that people's complete lack of empathy over its death or my evident grief has been both shocking and disturbing. One person even said to me -"Aren't they like crows?", as if to suggest ravens are plentiful and meaningless, my grief misplaced.
Ravens are in fact the most intelligent bird in the world (see - McGill University's - Dr. Louis Lefebvre) surpassing the grey parrot which previously sat alongside the dolphin as one of the two single most intelligent animals on this planet, after man.
The complete lack of empathy I've witnessed since discovering the raven and telling its story has opened my eyes to people's true priorities. When a cat dies, even your vet sends condolences but when you lose a wild animal who merely lives its free life on the periphery of your own, distantly worshipped and adored - you mourn alone.
March 28th 2008 ~
Finished and listed "Fryee Queeo [The Flying Squirrel]" on Etsy for a while but have now removed it. Prints of its first edition can still be ordered directly through me for 10:00$ Canadian and as I write this 17 prints are left from that edition. It doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the work. This painting was done as an aside really. It's something sweeter and less strange I can more easily offer up as a present, to the normal and/or the squeamish. (No parent has yet to order a large print of 'Mothbee' or 'Runt Of The Litter' for their baby's room, which surprises and mildly depresses me frankly.) This painting was of course inspired by the Northern Flyers were captured in our attic and relocated to a nearby old growth forest. We've never seen kinder creatures. They were sweet and calm, tame as pets - a total contrast from the violent Great Greys we captured and relocated only days before.
January 25th 2008 ~
Finished and listed "The Frost Kraken of 1816". I've also decided to sell the large format print only because it's spectacular and I don't feel like compromising. It's moody and mysterious... as though ancient proof of what once was. I'll try to get a few large copies framed in a willow twig frame. The euphoria of the prey as it dies in that white furry embrace is there. The menace of the Frost Kraken itself clearly seething in its ferocious eye. I'll never again walk along an icy pond without thinking about its foreboding presence just below the ice. During hard times I'm quite certain it fed upon beavers. But, on those lucky days it did feast upon the last stag or caribou. I've located the Frost Kraken upon the pond at Caribou Plains in Fundy Park. The caribou and elk are now extinct there... coincidence?
January 6th 2008 ~
Stumbled upon the work of Caroline Gaedechens (http://www.carolinegaedechens.com/) and fell madly in-love with the pure wild honesty of its vision.
http://www.carolinegaedechens.com/ January 9th 2008 ~
Added prints of Peregrine Wars and Voivode to Etsy. Re-listed re-formatted print versions of Mothbee & Jewel Lily and Runt Of The Litter (re-sized to better fit standard frame sizes). Added smaller less expensive prints of Morning Muricide, Cocoon as well as Runt Of The Litter. See VenisonArts.Etsy.com.
December 12th 2007 ~
Finished "Voivode" in due time. It features the female barn owl as voivode, singular huntress to a grand hall. So many mice, evoking memories of last Christmas when hours were spent hunting mice by hand before the cats arrived to save us from our own stupidity. Still with Bram Stoker's Dracula fresh in mind (a tale of modern Victorian clerical accomplishments as well as horror), I can as yet still picture the Carpathians by winter night. It, along with the season forces one to reflect on the solemn loneliness and ghostly majesty of nocturnal predators. Their job is singularly necessary yet so under-celebrated. We shall never again live in a house without a cat.November 19th 2007 ~
The question was posed to me yet again, -"Why don't you make 'real' art anymore?". If indeed I am no longer creating 'real' art; I can only conclude I must be doing something right.
November 14th 2007 ~
Completed "Peregrine Wars" and have added it. The landscape of it is my own yard, as viewed from below my giant pine tree looking uphill over the orchard. The painting itself is dominated from the left by the single head of a crow with a characteristically reddish peregrine egg in its beak. It also features a small crow on a branch before a distant pagoda as a reference to Ohara Koson's own "Crow Perched on a Branch of Cherry Blossom" c.1910 and the plight of "borrowed" popular Ukiyo-e motifs.
