Pictorial clichés have played an important role in James Aldridge’s work as a means towards suggesting something more mysterious and free of irony. The choice to create this work in a relative wilderness, meanwhile, enabled him to further probe his chosen subjects and iconography. Over time, Aldridge has undergone a shift in terms of his relationship to the imagery he uses, moving from a distant and abstracted approach to a more personal form of engagement. The image of the crow perched on a branch as a symbol of death and disaster may appear banal, yet Aldridge was struck by its timelessness when he perceived it as he drove through the countryside.
Aldridge has always been fascinated by the landscapes that serve as a backdrop to Renaissance paintings, and which contain similar details culled from the natural world – such as the crows and magpies in Breughel’s paintings or the goldfinches in Piero della Francesca’s compositions – and his recent works foreground such birds as protagonists.

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