About the Cover, Issue 31

The Parliament of Fowls is loosely based on the painting “Anguish” (1878) by August Friedrich Schenck, which depicts a mother ewe bawling in distress over a dead lamb as crows wait to feast on it. Rethinking this raw historical artwork, the sheep is now a therianthrope, in full dialogue with these intelligent and communicative birds. Perhaps the crows are still thinking of their dinner, perhaps they are deciding on the future of the world. Many of my pieces sit in these narrative eddies, with outcomes uncertain. The title comes from Chaucer’s poem of the same name, which discusses love, insults, seasons, and passages through time and lands. Included in it are birds debating in a parliamentary setting. 

Ethan Murrow is an artist and Professor of the Practice in Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. Ethan is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris, Obsolete Gallery in Culver City, California, and Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York City and Seattle. His work is included in numerous public, private, and corporate collections and has been widely reviewed and published internationally.