craftystylee

gh2u:

acymbalcrash:

claytoncubitt:

Walton Ford, ‘Sensations of an Infant Heart’ 1999 (detail)

“When John James Audubon was a young boy, his stepmother’s pet monkey strangled Audubon’s favorite pet parrot. The monkey was kept chained after the incident. Later Audubon would write that the “sensations of my infant heart at this cruel sight were agony to me” and that the painful memory may have been one of the reasons he painted birds.”