A Love You’ll Never Meet
Here you lay, little bird. Still as stone, light as an angel. I see you’ve begun to
become one with the ground, yet I still try to remember who you were. Your eye,
little bird, looks up, as if to the sky, but your body has failed you. You no longer can
move in such a way that you could go and fly, fly, far, far, away, away.
In the painting “A Love You’ll Never Meet” I dwell on past and possible future loves
gone, whether in death or emotional parting. It is an overwhelming realisation to
have – that something that was forever alive in your mind suddenly is nothing but
a decaying body. These dead birds that one might encounter in everyday life are
often my only reminders that things die and change irrevocably around me
constantly. Death will meet everything. And so, whenever I see something small
and unmoving, I look and remember how big it all is.
The body of the bird is mostly a tone of soft milky pink. It is so rich, light and
overflowing, yet it is connected with the rough character of its fur – the fading
memory of what used to be. The eye and beak are red, reminding of its lost fight
and hope for life. And then, quite crassly, its body is met with a thick, almost black
shadow on the ground. Ungrieving and unattached – the ground holds this bird in
its complete neutrality and neverendless presence.

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