And the Feathered Winds Blow: Pather Panchali

Oil paint and oil pastel on wood panel, 20” x 16”, 2022.

And the Feathered Winds Blow is based on a still taken from a pivotal scene in Pather Panchali, dir. Satyajit Ray, 1955. I made it for a final project in an interdisciplinary history/cinema studies class: Cinema of Youth. Easily one of my favorite and most meaningful high school classes, Cinema of Youth investigated the history of the concept of childhood, as told through (and formed by) film. My project was a meditation on motion and transportation. At its most literal, I decided this project should contain three paintings, each depicting a scene featuring some mode of transportation from one of the films we watched in the course. Childhood is a time of constant change, constant motion, yet with a relatively significant lack of personal autonomy in all of that movement. Children tend to gravitate towards toys with wheels — trucks, bicycles, model trains. Cinema itself is a transportative device, with the power to move its viewers. I conceived of (and finished) all three paintings in this series in one night, over the course of 9 hours — a group of about 15 students organized a painting studio lock-in/overnight to celebrate the end of the school year! Film is a huge part of my personal life, and the media I consume often cross-pollinates into my artwork — a facet of my practice I'm more than happy to embrace.