WINDOWSPACE - NOVEMBER 2018

BARRY MOUSLEY

BIRDS OF PREY, 2018

  

The passerine is a percher. Birds of prey are non-passerines with ripping beaks and razor talons.

Once again, with Birds of Prey (2018), Barry Mousley has brought the gentle insights of his touch and acute observation to WINDOWSPACE – tamed as it were, these raptors, some of such magnitude and piercing eye that it’s hard to imagine them anywhere but on their own cairn or branch, eyes glinting, surveying their domain, but here they are, in the window, gathered on a dramatic branch for all to see their magnificence in detail.

Wedge-tailed eagle

Nankeen kestrel

Peregrine falcon

Black-shouldered kite

Brown goshawk

Whistling kite
Brown falcon 
Australian hobby

Detail: work in progress Birds of Prey

Mousley has confessed to his inspiration being medieval in part, he cites manuscripts and stained glass as formative influences. The bird of prey is easy to fit into that world – aperch the wrist of a mail-clad knight, but it lives too in this locality.

Again it is important to dwell on Mousley’s art ‘as ‘loving’: a caress detected in the infinite subtlety of what appears such fidelity, is what sets his work apart. There is a glow in the attention to subject accuracy, not slavish verisimilitude. There is a warmth and fervor in the desire to share a knowledge of what has been seen and found’ – in his locality – and Mousley renders this desire and his joy in the natural world so well. 

Welcome again to WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC Barry Mousley!