Passenger Pigeon Flock Up Close

by Barry Kent MacKay

Original - Sold

Price

$2,000

Dimensions

24.000 x 30.000 x 0.250 inches

Title

Passenger Pigeon Flock Up Close

Artist

Barry Kent MacKay

Medium

Painting - Acrylics On Compressed Hardboard

Description

The story of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is well known. It is believed that at one time they numbered about three billion, the entire population confined to eastern North America. They occurred, and bred, in vast numbers. Flocks numbering in the millions were recorded up until about the first decades of the 19th century. They were slaughtered in vast numbers, and that, plus destruction of vast, contiguous oak/beech/maple forests that they preferred led to their decline, and eventual extinction. The last one known for sure died in a zoo, in 1914. In 1947 a monument to the memory of the species contained the words of Aldo Leopold: "Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live that, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know. There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, nor clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather; they live forever by not living at all." My painting is in acrylics on compressed hardboard, and is 30 by 24 inches. .

Uploaded

February 18th, 2022

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