My “about” page mentions that I like to collect all kinds of specimens. Well, this old habit extends to dead birds and I use the found opportunity to indulge my love of drawing them. I don’t often see an intact dead crow on the side of the road, but when I do, I’ll most certainly stop to pick it up for a study. I might take some photos, but in this case, I made a graphite drawing which I used as the reference for this painting (unfortunately, I don’t have an image of the drawing). The funny story about this is that when I picked up the Crow, it was fresh roadkill; but I was working so concentratedly on in the drawing for hours in the house and didn’t notice its increasingly terrible smell. But when my parents returned home from work, I was told that I’d have to take it outside immediately…
Years later, when I laid out the idea for the painting, I didn’t adhere very closely to the original Hans Christian Andersen tale. In fact I adapted it to my own ideas way outside of the story, including making the girl a lot bigger than a thumb. And it was a Bluebird —not a Crow—who helps her escape from kidnappers who wanted to force her to marry the Mole, a Toad, or some other creature, and I don’t think there was any sort of flight mishap involving a pocket watch in the original story. However, I do have a bit of a fascination for those mechanical objects, so there’s more broad adaptation for you. Okay, okay, the painting bears only a slight connection to the story, perhaps in name only.
Have you noticed that Andersen’s stories always seem to have some deep creep/ misogynist factor embedded in them? My feminist sensibilities are horrified that they are today still considered part of the “classic literature”, appropriate reading material for small children.
At the time of this painting’s creation, I was also keenly interested in the illustration of NC Wyeth, particularly the way he painted forests and wooded landscapes, and I was influenced by his stylistic choices here. The birch trees are a definite nod to his beautiful image of a pipe-trilling Native American man by a woodland stream.
I believe this is the first finished painting I signed with my last name, Kest, which puts this work around 1989 or 1990— after art school (the first iteration) but before becoming an illustrator in 1992.