40" x 32"
acrylic, oil on canvas

Excerpts from the full essay:

It is ugly, painful, suffocated. It is uncomfortable, active, hated. This is punishment. These feathers of bone and flesh must carry our meaty weight, but O how they tread! Soft human skin is pierced and pulled and stretched and torn. The beak is a mask, the face has never felt so clothed and clammy, eyes turn away from the sky and out toward the horizon. For once man only looks out and down and under, and experience becomes grounded as he takes to the sky.

(Here the viewer watches, takes for granted his ability to see and wait and judge, while the bird just experiences. “Is it here, is it done, is it permanent? Yellow blue and red shock me into questions that I cannot answer. But ask me a fourth time, and maybe an answer will come to me.” The bird can see another color, but the human inside cannot. Repetition becomes immortality in its meanest sense.

(I will not amend with the sky—tear through it and pollute its lungs, and its body will not longer take abuse.)