The idea around this work developed when I found a fledging crow that had fallen out of its nest next to a busy road in Deptford. I stopped to try and help and call the RSPCA but they told me to leave it alone, that its mother wouldn’t come back and help it if I touched it as they would be able to smell my scent on the baby’s downy feathers. 

I felt awful leaving it and worried about it a lot for the rest of the day especially because the crow kept looking up at me, with sad shadows in it eyes, as if it was about to cry. I went back a few hours later to check on it but the fledging had disappeared. It was a strange sense of relief seeing it gone but also worrying and I hoped it had not died and was in another place where it was safe.

I learnt that once a crow befriends you, or you take care of it, you become its mother for the rest of its life. They are very loyal and also have folklorish superstitions attached to them, which scare me but that I also like remembering. One example of this is, if you happen to see a solitary crow, you should make a wish – some see a crow sitting alonecas the ultimate good luck charm, which I hope is true.

Using the act of ritual within the feminine is a theme so prevalent within my work, I have used these stone women from Avebury in an imaginative landscape with the crows singing the ritual chorus before the midsummer ceremony can take place.

Melissa Kime was born in Wiltshire UK in 1989 and currently lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA Fine Art in 2011 from Falmouth University, with a postgraduate diploma in drawing from the Royal Drawing School in 2013 and with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2015. She has won numerous prizes for both drawing and painting and her work is in many private collections. Melissa is represented by C&C Gallery.