Hope is the thing

During lockdown, I've been working on a series of images to accompany Johanna Bell's wonderful poem, 'Hope is the Thing'. This image goes with the lines ‘Hope is a curlew/migrating south’.

I love the shape of the Eastern Curlew, especially their distinctive beaks. I did lots of drawings from videos of curlews in flight. Then I used the drawings to cut shapes from a monoprint of leaves from the garden along with text from an old encyclopedia and placed them all on a painted background.