April 1, 2024
From the Spring 2024 issue of Dwelling Fowl journal. Subscribe now.
Artist Jake Messing creates lush, collage-like works which can be a contemporary tackle colourful, Baroque-era nonetheless lifes. He attracts inspiration from the life-and-death cycles of nature, and the fascinating or uncommon behaviors he’s noticed whereas exploring the outside, corresponding to shrikes impaling their prey and cardinals attacking automobile mirrors. For his watercolor Azure Guard, he was impressed by an commentary of mobbing conduct throughout a late-summer journey to the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York. “We noticed a gaggle of three Blue Jays land in a tree close to a perching red-tail, after which begin dive-bombing and making a bunch of noise,” says Messing. In contrast to the Purple-tailed Hawk in his portray, Messing says the hawk he noticed getting mobbed “didn’t look like it cared an excessive amount of.”
