2023
6" x 4" Oil on Canvas
 
Shrikes are also called butcherbirds. These birds impale their prey on natural spikes like thorns or manmade skewers like barbed wire. It helps them feed but also stores the food. They are small, macabre collectors of a sort. Here, I have amassed a collection of preserved birds, both shrike and not. Different species from different places with different lives all brought to one location, a museum, to tell a unified story of ornithology. I cannot claim to be unbiased in my arrangement any more than a curator.