Rebecca Bird is exhibiting a series of oil and watercolor paintings that are portraits of avian life in which the static universe of natural history is reconfigured into a more subjective catalogue of relationships and exchanges. The artist paints birds that are found dead on city streets, in parks and empty lots. Employing the rigorous techniques of Northern Renaissance painting and scientific illustration, Bird’s concentrates on the passage of time and life with compositions that suggest a vaguely narrative afterlife. The artist’s choice of birds reflects her interest in how images establish systems and hierarchies. Bird said, “In the past, painting has served a function of enumerating what was known. I address specifics and unintentional causalities of urban life, rather than describing a taxonomy or a separation between nature and the world I live in. In my paintings I construct a framework in which to respond to things that are easily overlooked.”

Rebecca Bird was born in Seattle in 1973 and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited in New York, New Mexico, Seattle and Kanazawa, Japan. After receiving her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, she was awarded a 2000 Fulbright Fellowship to pursue her painting in Japan. This is her first solo exhibition in New York.