Smith Point. Photograph, 7 x 5 in. Copyright 2005, Tania Nault.
Hello Readers: This blog will be going “dark” for the next two weeks (until September 3rd). During this time, no comments will be posted. Hope you enjoy the last two weeks of summer holidays!
Rooster. Photograph, 4 x 6 in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.
Apparently, according to an article in The Western Producer (Watts, Jon M. “Chickens have technicolour vision.” August 16th, 2007. p. 69) of all the barnyard animals, chickens are the ones most likely to enjoy art. Well, actually, that’s not what the article said at all. What Watts, an animal behavioural consultant, actually said was that chickens have a large number of cones in their eyes and so are “colour vision experts.”
Here’s a bit of very basic eye anatomy: light passes through the pupil and onto the retina at the back of the eye. The retina has two types of photo-receptors, or light gatherers, rods and cones. Rods collect information about light in very low light conditions and are also sensitive to motion. Nocturnal animals, like cats, have many more rods than do humans, which helps them see very well in low light conditions. Cones, however, need daylight to effectively collect information about colour, and are also responsible for all high resolution vision. Diurnal animals like humans (and chickens) have many cones widely distributed across the retina and therefore have a wider range of vision in daylight than do nocturnal animals. Humans have three kinds of cones: blue sensitive, red sensitive and green sensitive, which makes it very easy for us to see a full spectrum of colours. Dogs, for example, only have red and blue cones, and so cannot see green the same way a human does.
Now, what does all this have to do with chickens appreciating art? Well, according to Watts, chickens not only have cones sensitive to red, green and blue, they have a fourth cone that can capture light in the ultraviolet spectrum, “The world of the chicken therefore probably contains colours that humans can even imagine, let alone see.”
And there you have it. The lowly chicken, art connoisseur.
WIP: Great Horned Owl. Scratchboard (etching on Claybord Black), 10 x 8 in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.
I thought this was far enough along now to show you. I’d originally etched out the iris right down to white, thinking I would colour this board. But I after I returned this weekend I took one look at it and knew I wanted to keep it in black and white. I put the grey tone for the iris in with an ink wash.
The original ref is from a photograph by Matthew Hull on morguefile.com - a wonderful resource for artists of every stripe - and although it was those wonderfully striking eyes that orignally captured my attention, I believe it was the almost bewildering variety of textures in the feathers that held it.
Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same. - Emily Bronté
Centrepiece. Photograph, 4 x 6 in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.
I just got back from a weekend away at my sister-in-law’s wedding and it was lovely. I know, I know, everyone says that, but this one really was; tasteful, elegant and beautiful. I took tonnes of photos and now have some cds to burn before the weekend! Glenda and Danny, congratulations, and I wish you every happiness.
Owls have long been an important bird in the human psyche. One of the oldest pieces of art in the world is a 32,000 year old cave drawing in Chauvet Cave in southern France of an owl looking over its shoulder*: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/page6.php And owls have figured in the mythology of almost every culture from the Australian aborigines who believe owls are the symbols of the souls of women, to the Welsh who believe that hearing an owl hooting while pregnant bestows a blessing on the unborn child. In many cultures the nocturnal owl is closely associated with darkness, death, and wisdom of the unknown. And today owls have symbolic importance for the environmental movement: the Northern Spotted Owl, most notably, has become a symbol of the importance of habitat preservation for species protection.
Why the talk of owls? Well, I recently started a scratchboard of a Great-Horned Owl - nothing I can show yet, but soon I’ll have some progress to post.
One of the things that struck me as I read about owls was the concern that many wildlife conservationists have for the fate of owls in countries where the cultural view of owls is poor. For example, in certain parts of Africa, owls are viewed as evil. And I’m not referring to mere symbolism of bad spirits, but actual evil with a capital “E”. Not so suprisingly then, it’s difficult to rally the support of local people to preserve and protect owls when their cultural history tells them they would be better off if the birds were dead.
I found this particularly curious because I’ve never really thought of animals that way. I mean, I was raised on a farm, so I’m intimately familiar with the concept of relative value when it comes to animals: our farm dog was pretty high up on the food chain until he started killing the chickens. I know what it’s like to be afraid of an animal: spiders, for instance (yes, silly isn’t it?). But I don’t think spiders are evil any more than I thought my dog was being evil when he killed chickens, he was just being a dog the same as spiders are just being, well, spiders.
I’m curious because I wonder how these beliefs began? How does an animal get a reputation for evil? Does believing owls are evil say something about the nocturnal habits of the birds or is it more an indication of just how scared of the dark humans are?
*The drawing is actually etched into the stone wall of the cave. This technique is known as sgraffito meaning “scratched” and is used to describe an etching process by which the artist scratches through a surface of one colour to expose another colour to create the drawing. I believe this ancient scratched owl could be the ancestor of modern-day scratchboard!
