Birds of prey

Birds of prey is a labor of love and homage to my grandparents, myself, woman and families. My poppop doesn't like animals (in his house). Yet when asked which he would have he always chooses birds. I often watched the birds that flew around our backyard with them. I chose birds for my grandfather and because I thoroughly enjoy making them.
Many of them look fine but upon closer inspection are riddled with maggots. This is to represent how sometimes you can't always tell a person has an illness until having a more intimate experience. Much like my grandmothers illness. And mental illness in general.
This piece features a myriad of birds such as northern cardinals, swan mothers and their babies, a mountain blue bird, a raven, and Japanese long-tailed tit (white birds). I have two active scenes within birds of prey.

One in which an injured northern cardinal is upon a bed of flowers and maggots adorned with my grandmothers makeup items. Surrounded by other birds much like vultures. This represents how my grandfather and I are affected by her passing and how grief often feels like a vulture picking at us.

Second is a scene depicting a blindfolded baby bird (me as a child) in a nest with three adult birds. Two being my grandparents and the one adorned with maggots is me as an adult. To represent how I was blind to her illness as a child. The steady realization of it. And how the residual pain left by her growing illness; as well as her succumbing to it, is affecting me now and as i got older.

The white long-tail adorned in a pink and white lace bow is a comment on the beauty standards put upon woman. Woman are wrapped in a tight pretty bow of expectations that are debilitating and suffocating. Hence the maggots plaguing the poor girl, and the bow constricting her wings.