Teri Walsh Art

Teri Walsh Art

The Crow & Birdland

Returning from a few days away in 2008, we found the remains of a crow in the road outside our house (we were living in Wolverhampton at the time).  Before removing it I took a single digital photograph. What fascinated me was that the carcass had clearly been both picked clean (by other crows?) and run over many times so that it had nearly disappeared into the road.

The Crow – harbinger of death; bringer of good luck.

Teri Walsh Art
The Crow screen print 2008
Teri Walsh Art
The Crow Collagraph 1 collagraph 2008/16

I became obsessed by this image and decided to dedicate an entire semester at college to working on it in various media including both 3D and 2D.  It also gave me the opportunity to explore the idea of negative as well as positive (by manipulating the original image) and to carry out various experiments. In some images, The Crow looks to be alive again (and sometimes even rather malevolent). Within this project I employed a wide range of media including: charcoal; chalk; pen and ink; monoprint; linocut; collagraph; screenprint; etching; oil paint on linen; ceramic tiles; and a resin cast. 

Then there is the idea of Birdland. This was conceived as a monochromatic room featuring a lot of the drawings, paintings and/or prints but also furniture. A sofa and chairs upholstered in a geometric positive and negative black and white material featuring both positive and negative images of The Crow. A geometric rug also featuring The Crow.  Pieces of furniture (including items rescued from a skip) which were sanded down, primed, painted with a number of layers of black gloss paint (sanded in between at varying angles to create texture) and then, finally, The Crow was sanded through to the primer.  Two versions of this installation were installed in one-woman shows (one in Hastings and the other in Mayfair, London) and some of the pieces have been shown elsewhere.