Crow, sumi ink.

Many people are curious concerning the name TwoCrows. On the croft where I have lived since 1978 there are always crows in the immediate vicinity of the studio. Sometimes there are many more but there is always at least two.

They are black Carrion Crows although only two fields away is the territory of a pair of black and grey Hooded Crows. In the summer the crows clump about and bang on the flat roof of the studio.

The crow is a symbolically significant animal to me, sacred as it is to the Celtic deity Lugh and the Greek Apollo. Who are both regarded as patrons of the arts. I have been asked, with some surprise, if I like crows. When a crow is killing my new hatched chicks I will be annoyed. I will try to kill it in order to preserve my own interest. However I believe it is ridiculous to feel animosity toward any natural phenomenon. Crows are, they are not for us to like or dislike. The onus is on us to develop strategies to cope with them. We gain more from delighting in the world than loathing it.

That said my feelings for crows are complex ambivalent and often contradictory. I admire their intelligence. I regard them as competitors and rivals when they kill chicks, peck the eyes out of still living lambs or beat me to a road kill I would have eaten myself (starving artists do that sort of thing). In my more mystic moments I regard them as spiritual messengers. Well the world is like that and what seems to annoy a lot of people is that crows are very good at reminding us of just what the world can be like and the central role of mortality in existence. I recommend to you the ancient Scottish ballad The Twa Corbies, (The Two Crows).