"Over the last few years, words like pandemic, unrest, lockdown, and shortage have defined our world. During this time, when it feels as if my life has grown heavy under the weight of it all, I step outside to watch the skies. Invariably, I find birds. Their patterned flight draws my gaze upward and with it, gradually, I feel the heaviness lift. For me, birds are embodiments of hope, just as they have been throughout human history. A dove, in the book of Genesis, brings the sign of life renewed after complete destruction. Cranes, in Japanese culture, are linked to granted wishes. And hummingbirds, to the early people of the Americas, were figures of resurrection.
But these symbols of hope are also potent signs of humanity’s effects on nature. Studies during the recent lockdown reveal that sparrows had begun to sing more quietly once they no longer competed with the sounds of traffic. Not only are birds’ songs altered because of our noise, but they are progressively fettered by our pollution, thrown off migratory paths by city lights, killed in collisions with wind turbines and power lines and windows. All of which begs the question: what does it mean to live in a time in history when there are one-third fewer birds now than there were fifty years ago?
I am fortunate to live and work in Colorado, on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains along an extensive avian migratory route. From day to day, one season into the next, I make my way outside and soon my heart lifts at the sight of an arrangement of doves against a winter sky, or robins appearing with the first hints of spring, by ducks in summer drifting lazily down the river, and the murmurations of starlings blurring the golden autumn fields.
And so I find, when that heaviness presses down on my spirit, I step outside to watch the skies. I paint birds as I search for glimpses of transcendence. And always, I look for hope."
David Grossmann, February 2022
