Description
The image of the boy holding his cat was in the newspaper explaining that this boy’s house had just been bombed in the war with Russia. His mother had perished and all he seemed to have in the world was his white cat amidst the ruins. The full moon, deer and mushrooms that are meant to represent Ukraine where the sadness of war is reflected in the boy’s face. The circles with tiny specks are bird murmurations–large formations creating shifting shapes in the sky in wave-like ballets containing thousands and sometimes millions of birds moving in perfect synchronicity. It is primarily a defence mechanism to confuse predators like falcons and hawks and a way for the birds to gather for warmth during dusk in the fall and winter months before settling down for the night. I felt the boy was clutching his cat in self defence at the horror of what had just happened to his mother and home. My message in this work is that war is far from synchronized and destroys innocent lives.
