“Rats with wings,” as Woody Allen disaffectedly termed them in 1980, have never had it easy. Pigeons in New York City have long been in a losing rat race for space, garbage, and respect. Among those who flocked beyond the futile urban jungle was a ginger-feathered bird named Pecan.
Unlike his beady-eyed and hustling peers, Pecan yearned to rise above the pecking order. Pronounced “Peh-kahn,” never “Peek-can,” he was a sensitive soul with an inquisitive gaze that saw past the mundane grey concrete to color, light and sound. Although he was a country pigeon at heart, born in rural Connecticut, he was nevertheless left to fend for himself, seemingly abandoned and unloved.
But Pecan used his charms to pave the way to a better life. He was following people into their homes for food in 2014 when he was admitted to the nature retreat of Earthplace, nestled in the affluent enclave of Westport, Connecticut. He quickly turned over a new leaf, and life began to change.
The curious yet kind children and special needs adults who regularly visited him were quite artistic. Along with his first caretaker, Leigh Ann, his captive audience challenged him to explore vibrant color palettes in nature art, glitter and form. Pecan began to eagerly and passionately study the artwork around him, learning and therapizing from the ground up.
“Coo coo, coo coo,” he explained from his large cage, which translates to, “The artist in me is omnipresent in the shared experience of abstraction. I have found solace in the surrounding innocent freshness of youth, and continue to be enlivened by its vitality.”
The resulting work is quite evocative, hailing from a post-modern heritage of movement in Gutai Japanese performance art and the gesture of American icon Jackson Pollock.
Pecan eschews traditional brushes in favor of his clawed feet, dancing to the beat of his inner creative. While the fluorescent children’s paintings served as the initial inspiration, Pecan has subsequently returned to his forest roots with a generally subdued polychrome in tones of brown, orange, and green. The warm claw paintings may indeed be somewhat autobiographical, as Pecan has brown and red feathers that set him apart.
The pigeon’s mounting collection of work has caught the eye of select elite Connecticut and visiting international collectors, who have brought the price of each piece up to $15. Alas, despite his artist bio claiming his work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian, it appears his caretakers may have slightly embellished the history of his acquisitions. Rumor does have it, however, that his work is genuinely admired in a collection at the Connecticut Department of Environment and Environmental Protection.
Although Pecan’s work does follow in the artistic tradition of other animal painters such as Ruby the elephant at the Phoenix Arizona Zoo in the early 1990s and the B-52 Apes at Art Basel Miami this past year, the art acts as a quiet commentary apart from creature comforts, expressing a journey from solitude and sorrow to joy and self-expression. His cage mate and asexual life partner, Cashew, is a delicate black and white dove with less artistic inclination. Yet Cashew unequivocally supports Pecan in all his endeavors.
“Coo coo coo,” she added, topping it off with a long stare, which translates to, “Pecan is not like the other pigeons. He is indisputably gifted; museums are remiss not to see that he is the single-most prolific and profound pigeon painter of all time.”
Pecan is available for studio visits at Earthplace seven days a week. While very social, he prefers to paint in private.