Philippa’s photograph of the mechanical digger (see last post) has switched a light on in my head, and one of the results is that the title of the Kevin and the Blackbird drawing currently in progress has now been changed from Empty Nest to Held. This afternoon I had a good session that saw work on the saint’s tattooed torso move forward significantly, and with luck I may well complete the drawing tomorrow. Here’s how it was looking at close of business today.

The saint’s tattoos in this drawing are quite unlike the lanceolate leaves and softly flowing tendrils of the last one, in which there was a graceful aspect to the inked pattern. Now the saint’s body seems a war-zone of aggressively thorny growth, as though he’s marked not by benign nature, but a natural world full of pain and chaos.
Sometimes a drawing or painting just has to find its own way, and so it is with this one. In 2009 in the first work of the series, I painted Kevin as a man almost crucified by the agonising task of supporting the bird’s nest, his thrust-out arm visibly straining with the effort. In the later works I eschewed that approach, and instead the saint cradled the nest in table-top still-life landscapes-in-miniature. Now the ideas have further evolved, and Kevin once again is showing signs both of mental strain and the privations of the hermit’s life. Nature is ultimately cruel, and in protecting the nest and its occupants from the worst of it, perhaps the saint has absorbed everything that scratches and strangles, taking the blows for the blackbird and her tender young while they are at their most vulnerable.
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