Yutori Bird sister
I made these birds when my eldest daughter got married. I think of them as prayers. The stabilo pencil shears off when you are drawing and smashes into the surface of the paper as the paper pass through the tremendous pressure of the press. The lightness of the birds remain buoyant and suspended in flight. In some of them you can see traces of my hair.
This print incorporates a drawing I made of flowers that I made many years ago with my friend, the artist Andrew Vass who encouraged me to take myself seriously as an artist. The bird is inspired by inscriptions in the entrance to Santa Maria Trastavere in Rome.
Yutori is a Japanese word. It is a kind of living with spaciousness. Like getting somewhere early so you can have a look round. I like the way different kinds of spaces can have different words and that seemingly empty spaces can be full of unexpected things rather than absences. This bird has unruly wings and is a bit moth eaten round the edges but is making a good crack at trying to head upwards and onwards. There is an ancient story I heard on Writers and Company that Laurie Anderson tells of the lark flying in the open skies before the land was made. She had no place to bury her father so she decided to bury him at the back of her head and thus became memory.