A series of hand-painted photographs of dead animals encountered during Daniel & Clara's daily walks in the countryside. Each work is a uniquely painted c-type photograph with the name of the species along with place and date found inscribed in white india ink.
“Since we moved to the countryside in 2020, we often encounter dead animals during our daily walks, sometimes roadkill, sometimes the remains of another animal’s meal, and sometimes the body in an apparently pristine condition, the cause of death a mystery. We always feel a strange combination of repulsion and a desire to look. We found ourselves compulsively taking photographs each time we'd see a dead animal but it took us a while to know what we would do with these pictures. Painting became a way to have a deeper engagement with the subject and to bring into the photograph (a mechanical record of death) a vitality of life while lived (the marks of our conscious living engagement, and our empathetic leap into the dead animal’s experience).”
- Daniel & Clara
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Garganey)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Garganey)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
“We've been thinking a lot about historical depictions of dead animals, particularly still lives from the 17th century. The animals depicted were hunted or farmed for food and presented as demonstrations of abundance and wealth. Our pictures differ in that these animals are wild and found dead in the landscape, photographed as we found them. These are still lives born at the other end of the industrial revolution and under the atmosphere of the climate crisis – they are personal meditations on the lives and deaths of the animals that live unseen around us.”
- Daniel & Clara
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Dunnock)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Common Toad)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Lesser Black-Backed Gull)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Brown Hare)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
“Looking back we can see how this series was also deeply impacted by the experience of the pandemic. It was a time of great anxiety and we were all confronted with images and narratives about death from the media and the government's daily announcements of Covid-related deaths. In some ways this series was a way for us to confront and deal with this. It became a framework for us to think about our relationship to human and non-human death in our society and to reflect on our fears of our own mortality.”
- Daniel & Clara
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Herring Gull)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Brown Hare)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Fox)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
Birds & Beasts of the British Countryside (Fox)
c-type photograph hand-painted in acrylic, titled and signed in white india ink, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
£425 + shipping
“One of the most striking encounters we've had was finding the body of a dead fox, lying pristine on the edge of a field as if it had just fallen asleep. It had probably been hit by a car but there were no obvious marks on its body. We returned to the same place ten days later and the body was still there but the rain had accelerated its decay, it was looking more gruesome, the fur had become tangled and matted with earth – the fox was undergoing a process of becoming landscape.”
- Daniel & Clara
