Flightless Bird

An original mixed media artwork, rich with surreal symbolism and tactile intrigue. Each layer is meticulously built upon a heavy-duty stretched canvas using a myriad of materials, inviting the viewer into a world of texture and depth. Created with professional archival paints and sealed for protection, this piece is designed to endure. The included collage elements are printed with archival inks on fine art papers, ensuring the vibrancy lasts for generations.

14x18

mediums/materials: phosphorescent paints, found objects, paper, wax, photo collage, oxidative inks, distress paint and inks, acrylic pouring, digitally altered images, acrylic paint, watercolor, spray paint, walnut ink, staining mediums, tissue paper, mica powders, glitter, heavy gel medium, gesso, pebeo prism and fantasy paints, ceramic paint, stained glass paint, alcohol inks, iridescent inks, distress crayons, charcoal, pastels, oil pastels, string, beads, jewelry, gems, chains, buttons, foils, newspaper, vinyl, plastic, walnut inks, india ink, colorshift paints and more!

The birdcage represents multiple layers of meaning—literal captivity, the social cages we construct, the limitations imposed by others or circumstance, and perhaps most poignantly, the internalized prison that remains even after external barriers fall. The grass growing inside suggests nature's persistence, reclamation, and the irony that freedom arrived too late or in the wrong form. What grows in the space meant for flight is earthbound, rooted, the opposite of avian nature. The skeletal remains and preserved wings function as memento mori—reminders of mortality but also archaeological evidence of what existed before captivity, death, or loss. They're displayed with the reverence of museum specimens, suggesting how we preserve and study what we've destroyed. The coral petals adorning the skull create a funeral arrangement, acknowledging that even small deaths deserve ceremony and beauty. They speak to how we attempt to make loss bearable through ritual and decoration. The clock parts scattered throughout reference time's role in all losses—the slow accumulation of captive days, the suddenness of death, the endless aftermath of grief, and how those who are gone become frozen in time while the living continue forward. The oxidative surface with its rust and verdigris suggests both decay and the peculiar beauty that emerges from deterioration. It's the patina of age, evidence of chemical transformation, time making art from destruction. The turquoise background functions as both sky (forever out of reach) and water (burial, drowning, baptism), creating ambiguity about whether this is elegy or rebirth. ```

This work explores the particular devastation of potential thwarted—beings designed for flight rendered earthbound through captivity, injury, or circumstance. It addresses both literal and metaphorical flightlessness: the grounding of spirit, ambition, creativity, or selfhood by forces external or internal. The piece questions what remains when defining characteristics are stripped away—if a bird cannot fly, what is it? If we cannot become what we were meant to be, who are we? The collision of delicate avian anatomy with heavy oxidation and decay speaks to how captivity and denial corrode from within, how what cannot be expressed eventually turns inward and destroys. Yet the work also finds strange beauty in this destruction, suggesting that even in loss and limitation, there is something worth preserving, worth mourning, worth making art about. The grass growing in the cage offers ambiguous hope—nature persists, life finds ways to continue, but it may not be the life that was intended or desired. The archaeological presentation of remains asks viewers to witness, to study, to understand what was lost so that perhaps such losses might be prevented in future. This painting serves as both memorial and warning, honoring the specific while speaking to universal experiences of constraint, whether by others' hands or our own fears. It suggests that the worst prisons are those where the door eventually opens, but by then we've forgotten how to leave, or worse, our wings have atrophied beyond use. ```