Artist Statement

Comical Birdbrains started in October 2023, when I created the character Quinn, a short-billed dowitcher who is a Philadelphia-based comedian, and I have since created 3 more characters based on birds with insulting sounding names. Carol the Common Loon/author, Jude the Bufflehead/musician, and Cornelius the Ring-Necked Pheasant/lawyer. I then went on to create a set of comics, using acrylic paint and sharpies on 16x20 canvases, featuring the 4 birds and their various misadventures.

I was drawn to the idea of utilizing the gallery space to display the illustrated comics because I have never seen that done elsewhere, and I wanted to encourage a discussion about artforms that we might not initially recognize as such. Additionally, in an increasingly digital age, I aimed to embrace the analogue when creating the comics, hence the usage of paint and canvases. This is also why I displayed extra artifacts from the work process such as the paint testing paper and the initial sketches.