fabrics dyed with indigo, madder, tea,  and clutch, handmade wool felt, fabric from my old chair, papers, vintage school posters, string, thread, inks, birch bark, gold leaf, dots and holes, 43 x 53 inches.

When it’s still dark, and there are hours before it is time to wake up, all of a sudden, there is a  tremendous symphony of  bird twittering called the dawn chorus.  Supposedly this means that the birds are claiming their territory, food and mates.  I love this time of the night/morning because it is when the birds  seem dominant on earth and other human sounds or sights are in retreat. 

This artwork has had many iterations as part of a tree and on a lighter background, but as soon as I put it on the dark, indigo background, I knew that it was the Dawn Chorus.   Then, because I really am fixated on the earth that we come from, I included the underground full of worms for the birds’ brekkie. The sun is quite brazen. It is coming from behind the dark sky, but has not yet arrived.   This part of the artwork is intentionally folky and I was thinking of Rousseau and his most divine and raw, lush artworks. At first it was a big red blob, but someone likened it to a big placenta, which it did seem to be, so I cut out rays instead which is much more successful. 

I know that these colours are bizarre and not super sonorous, but in this artwork, I was looking to create a perfectly clashing amalgamation.  For me, though the colours are kind of ugly, they satisfy something visually for me that I cannot explain. 

To me, it is fitting that I am writing this on the summer solstice in 2026.