Birds is a side project created during the Covid-19 lockdown in Wales, UK. The full title is Birds: By someone who doesn’t read books * and is a development of drawings made during a residency at the Elan Valley, Wales in 2017. The starting point was how knowledge comes to us and is received in many forms. Knowledge gained through experience and engagement has become less valued over academic texts and the knowledge industry; This knowledge exists outside of the very environment and conditions that created it. Birds is a personal reading of my immediate wildlife that is dependent on experience to inform and shape its meaning.

Birds takes the form of a series of humourous, and intentionally commercial, illustrations initially looking at a different aspect of specific birds witnessed and presented on a daily basis on social media. On 3rd June 2020 the daily drawings will end at a number of 50. A further 50 will be created to become 100 illustrations for a book to be published November 2020. This will be through print on demand, while the book will be distributed to a number of outlets initially in Wales prior to Christmas. The book will include footnotes on the original observations and the ideas behind the why it is drawn.

Examples of the Instagram version are below.

@richard.higlett on instagram will turn up ‘Birds’ and the first 50. The following 50 will be held back from being in the public realm until they are in the printed book.