“A Round of Robins” is a recent addition to
my “Pattern” series, and very much an outgrowth of the “Hedgerow” paintings.
Earlier in this series, I pitted animal subjects against stamp-like, mass
produced images of themselves. In this
piece, however, rather than being presented in front of a patterned
background, the robins (like the hedgehogs in “Hedgerow” and “Hedgerow #2”) are
melded into the background pattern itself. The “Pattern” series explores
the notion of commodification of wildlife, reproductive capacity, and the
ubiquity of urban wildlife. It is in
this last sense that “A Round of Robins” relates. The removal of the animal subject from its
natural habitat and its recontextualizing in a stark, white space, underscores
the ability of the Robin to adapt to foreign and man-made environments, like
many so-called “garden birds.” The serial nature of the Robin “stamps” and the
use of non-objective color further serve to pull the animal out of context, and
to simultaneously emphasize and defy, its beguiling commonness. Even within this sea of colors, the two
representationally “realistic” birds almost become lost. The entry of one such bird from the left side
of the painting and the exit of the other half of its body to the right lends
the image a suggestion of constant, repetitive motion like an old-fashioned
zoetrope.

Robins are a common visitor to gardens
throughout the UK. Like many ubiquitous
animals, this familiarity sometimes works against them to the extent that they
are overlooked and taken for granted. Sometimes we can only truly see the
familiar when it is made unfamiliar.