Based on Aesop’s Fable “The Crow and the Swallow”.
The story goes; a Swallow was once boasting to a Crow about her birth. "I was once a princess," said she, "the daughter of a King of Athens, but my husband used me cruelly, and cut out my tongue for a slight fault. Then, to protect me from further injury, I was turned by Juno into a bird." "You chatter quite enough as it is," said the Crow. "What you would have been like if you hadn't lost your tongue, I can't think."
This fable annoyed me so, I had to make the painting. The swallow was at fault for mentioning her misfortune? I suppose sympathy or compassion would be too much to expect.In my painting, the crow is actually sitting on a mythological bird with angry teeth and ironically a huge tongue. I wanted to represent something more hideous than an aberration of a recognizable version of a crow, as the response to her story was so vulgar to me.
