Bird

The tenderness is in the looseness, in the refusal to trap the bird in exactness. Its form is there, yes, but it’s softened, like it’s being remembered just a second after it’s flown off. I let the pencil blur where it needed to, pressing only enough to trace a suggestion. It felt like drawing something that could vanish if I looked too long.

I think that’s what I keep chasing in work like this—how to hold something without holding it too tightly. There’s care in that, and also surrender. The drawing isn’t about the bird as much as it is about how it made me feel: a sudden quiet, a swell of tenderness, and the ache that comes with knowing it won’t stay.

Bird/ Charcoal on paper/ 35 x 25 cm