A little bird told me about an upcoming exhibition in London featuring Fran Giffard’s body of work that layers the wild over the domestic. After she filled up her personal moleskine journal with writing, Giffard did some repurposing and began to paint birds over all of its used pages with aquarelle, gouache, and graphite pencil. The result is a vivid safari adventure through an unexpectedly personal landscape.
While birdwatching, I caught sight of wedding dates, grocery lists, vacation plans, even diary entries. Weirdly intimate information about a stranger, which makes me feel like I’m flipping through something I know I shouldn’t be looking at. Sometimes the birds are painted alongside the text, carefully leaving the words unobscured. Other times, their plumage covers entire chunks of writing and I realize how nosy I am being trying to read someone else’s journal. That’s something you’re not supposed to do, isn’t it? Too bad, because I can’t look away.
Visit Fran Gifford’s drawing portfolio
