Drawn to Birds
From Fear to Fascination
Birds and I have history.
My inclusion in Drawn to Birds at the Scottish Ornithologists' Club has made me reflect on how unlikely this subject once felt.
Because for a long time, birds unsettled me.
It began on a family holiday in Luxembourg in the 1990’s. Picture a forest and youngster me running ahead of the rest of my group. Idilic. I stopped to sit on a bench and wait for the slowcoaches to catch me up when a bird fell from the trees above me and landed at my feet.
Dead. Unmistakably dead.
After that, I seemed to notice dead birds everywhere; on the school playing field, along railway tracks, on pavements. I became hyperaware, scanning the ground constantly. They felt ominous. Fragile and foreboding all at once.
Years later came the flapping episodes. A bird loose inside my student house while I lay frozen in bed. Another trapped behind a sealed fireplace after falling down a chimney. Jackdaws nesting in my roof space and, one day, a dead baby jackdaw on the stairs. I still can’t figure out how on earth it got inside.
Even now, sudden flapping makes my heart jump. Pigeons in particular feel like a law unto themselves.
And yet, I have always found birds beautiful.
When I began exploring birds in my work, it wasn’t through form or flight. It was through colour.
Studying birds through photographs allowed me to slow everything down. To isolate tones. To look closely at how iridescence shifts between green and violet, how chestnut deepens into near-black, how a flash of blue can electrify an otherwise muted palette.
In the studio, this begins with yarn wound around scraps of cardboard in small, layered colour studies. I’ll stand at the shelves with cones in hand, holding combinations together, adjusting, subtracting, adding.
My youngest has an uncanny affinity for colour. She stands beside me at the yarn shelves, confidently pointing at cones for me to lift down for her and holding them together, instinctively matching tones. She also delivers her verdicts with great certainty: “That one is beautiful.” And she is nearly always right.
Only when the palette feels resolved do I take it to the loom.
What began as a tentative exploration has become a continuing study. Each bird offers a new challenge in restraint and brilliance.
What surprises me most is not that I work with birds now — it’s that I am, apparently, rather good at spotting them.
Particularly eagles off the Scottish coast.
Not bad for someone who doesn’t even own a pair of binoculars.
Perhaps the hyperawareness never left. It simply changed shape. As I once scanned the ground for omens I now scans the horizon for silhouettes and study plumage for tonal shifts.
This spring, the SOC presents a vibrant exhibition of prints, paintings, textiles and wooden sculpture, all inspired by birds and shaped by close observation of the natural world.
Matt Sewell brings his joyful watercolours and field-based illustrations, drawn from his work as an ornithologist and bestselling author.
Tom Frost presents original screen prints and playful hand-crafted wooden birds — contemporary reinterpretations of Victorian natural history collections.
Jane Smith begins outdoors, sketching intimate wildlife encounters before translating them into vibrant screenprints in the studio.
And then there is me — a weaver who once felt unnerved by the very creatures she now studies so closely.
The exhibition at Waterston House runs from 7 March – 26 April, Tuesday to Sunday, 10am–4.30pm, with free entry, and is also viewable online via the Scottish Ornithologists' Club.
The pieces I am showing are available to purchase, and I am always happy to discuss commissions if there is a particular bird you would love to see translated into cloth.
Which bird would you choose?
There is always space for another on the loom.
H x