Cranes

“When she left us, I thought she might be reborn as a bird, and I always pictured an elegant red-crowned crane.”

My late mother loved birds and enjoyed watching them at her birdfeeder.

Birds were a frequent subject of her watercolors, which she loved painting on card-sized paper. I remember she would save the free pictures we would get sent in the mail for fundraising efforts from organizations like National Geographic, and then encourage me to use them as references. Alas, at the time, I preferred sitting at the family computer playing games or making silly videos over painting birds.

When she left us, I thought she might be reborn as a bird, and I always pictured an elegant red-crowned crane. It’s a symbol of immortality after all.

Then, while still trying to process the grief from my mom’s passsing, I read Emily X. R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. I sobbed my way through the entire book because I couldn’t separate the fiction from my reality. The protagonist was mourning the loss of her mother, who she believed reincarnated into a crane. Though much of what she wrote differed to my experience, Pan had painted a part of my grief in the form of prose, bringing to life the words I couldn’t find.

On the five year anniversary of her death, I had a crane inked on the center of my back.

The crane represents my mother, my spiritual guide, & my protector — I wanted to create a series of paintings that paid tribute to that. Much like the graceful movements of the real bird, this collection of art is painted in a fluid way, a nod to the traditional East Asian style of ink wash painting.