'Welcome/Bienvenidos' Painting

Andalusia's extraordinarily varied climate and topography is home to a spectacular variety of birdlife. It's geographical location means that it is also a place where migratory species are in constant passage from Africa to the north of Europe and vice versa. It is thus a place of great global importance and a measure of the health of many bird species populations. The works in this series are the result of both a lifelong interest in the subject, the close study of historical depictions and over ten years of acquaintance with the region. The paintings place the birds of the area in the locations and landscapes in which Finn has observed them and they are infused with the light, the character and the atmosphere of Andalusia and convey a true sense of place and the birds place within it. The tradition of depicting birds in art is of course as old as visual culture itself chiefly because birds have always been considered emblematic of the ephemeral and transitory nature of life. It is for this reason that they continue to be the object of a gentle obsession for many. While this cycle of fourteen paintings seems prima facie a straightforward, representational depiction of the bird and plant species of Andalusia it is however the pretext for a deeply considered inquiry into contemporary human population movements and migrations, the underlying drives and motivations for this, about both forced and aspirational displacement, and about boundaries as a purely human construct and those without a passport mere flotsam and jetsam. It is also an examination of humanity's conception of flight itself and the privileges and possibilities afforded by our ability to fly. By analogy and allegory the series considers the ramifications engendered by man becoming avian-man through a techno-evolutionary leap. By freeing ourselves from gravity's grasp and by fulfilling this fundamental wish we must now, as Stephen Hawking has said, 'assess man on a cosmic scale'. We have however lost the sense of awe in regard to the ability to fly. It has become so commonplace so as to be almost meaningless while at the same time the miracle of flight has become forever tainted. The myriad hijackings, crashes, disappearances and downing of planes mean that flight itself as a means of escape has been forever undermined and we have as evinced by 9/11 turned our means of flight against ourselves. In the modern period man became his own creator and consequently he has also become his own destroyer. We have, all of us, become Icarus.