Warblers from the Field Museum

I've been working on this drawing for a month or so now. It's sort of about a lot of things - the model of the mind as an aviary (as discussed in Plato's Theaetetus, which I really don't know at all, but I read about this concept in a favorite book by Lawrence Weschler - Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder), memories of my grandmother, stillness, learning, death, etc. etc.

The birds are painted from a picture of a display case full of stuffed warblers at the Field Museum in Chicago. The little landscape drawings are from my grandmother's sketchbook. The xerox-transfer photos are of her and her family.

I had some little paper squares of text in this originally (they were standing in for the tags next to all the birds), but I ended up taking them out because it was a little too busy visually. I'm still working out how I'm going to finish this one off; I have a feeling that for everyone but me it just looks like a drawing of a bunch of sketchy warblers.