Esmari Rowan Harrod is remarkable in that she regards herself as an amateur artist. Amateur suggests that the work is simply a pastime, unpaid and generally unskilled in execution. Art, for Es, is far more than a pastime, it is an essential connection with her inner self, the delicate, particular detailing of her love of nature, especially Birds and Bones. These are not opposite extremes at all, b
ut essential parts of Es’s fascination with life in general. As Emily Dickinson pointed out a long time ago, ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers* , and Es has spent a great deal of time caring for some of the world’s most spectacular things-with-feathers, many of them rare and endangered. She knows birds inside-out, from egg to flight to nesting and beyond, fascinated by their fragility, their resilience and their beauty – these flags of hope. Back to the amateur label. Certainly no-one pays Es to paint; she does that because her soul demands it. However, people recognize her skill, the passion, precision and humour in her work, and there is probably not an artist on earth who would say ‘no’ to someone who falls in love with a painting and wants to own it. After all, it is the act of creation that thrills the artist. A completed painting gives joy to the viewer, but to the artist it is simply satisfactory, and the challenge of a new painting calls. Naturally, money is essential for replenishing materials, and it is a duty of communities that they support their gifted members. So what about the Bones? Well, maybe we need to modify Es’s comment regarding her status as an amateur artist. I think she’s spelt is wrongly. She is actually an armature artist. You know, armature? It is the wire frame that sculptors create to build a body around. Bones are the sculpted armature of every creature, the essential support element that prevents us from being indistinguishable from jellyfish. It’s the interior scaffolding that shapes ourselves and our lives, more durable than flesh and blood. Its what’s left over when everything else has gone. A bone is just a bone, but a skull is a memento mori. For many of us, it’s almost painful to confront a skull, human or animal. It is both the essence of being and the essence of non-being, the bald statement of life being ephemeral, while the bones might endure for centuries. Es is drawn to the sculpted skulls of wildlife, elegant in their own right, but still stark reminders of death - our death. Like an angel, Es transforms these ferocious relics into objects of warming beauty. She clothes their bareness in tenderly applied colour and design, exploring shape, creating liveliness and loveliness; recognition of, and a tribute to, the vitality and perfection of the once living creatures. In short, she give us hope, in a demonstration that death is not the end, but a transformation. Sandy Dacombe Ferrar
*'Hope' is the thing with feathers-
It perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops at all-
