Anyone who has ever seen cormorants has surely also already spotted them in this typical pose, while drying their wings in the air. Here where I live, by Lake Garda, you can see many of them. However, these birds also create some disturbance for local fishermen, who do not like the intrusiveness of these animals, which are great fish-eaters. They are pushing for a containment programme, because cormorants catch and eat too much fish, thus breaking the ecological balance. Are we sure it is cormorants the most impactful in the area? Of course not, according to reports. In fact, it is human fishing that really creates damage in these areas, as in the whole world. It is simply more convenient for fishermen to point the finger at ‘competitors’, to distract, to spread misleading information.
This is an image deliberately reminiscent of sacred icons. The open-winged pose is similar to that of who, through no fault of his own, has been put on a cross.

The gold leaf, as in many of my other paintings, is intended to emphasize the message of how extremely valuable nature and its various ecosystems are. So gold has not only a decorative but also a symbolic value in the composition.