Andrew Fitchett

On Monday we get an e-mail from the prestigious on-line gallery londonart.co.uk. Every year they get a panel of painters to choose a selection of the best pictures from the thousands on sale on the site. One of the chosen few, the e-mail says, is by a local painter. He’s called Andrew Fitchett, and he lives in Lewes. The painting is called ‘Crows and Dead Tree’ and you can see it here.

A quick look on Andrew’s section of the site shows that most of his pictures include images of crows, ravens, rooks and starlings. An interesting obsession. We decide to investigate. Andrew lives at the top of Nevill, a hard cycle ride on a rainy day. “I’m fascinated with these birds,” he says, in a spacious kitchen overlooking a pleasant but sodden-looking garden, having made me a welcome cup of tea. “My fascination stems from the fact that they are present in folk-lore and mythology of all ages, from all parts of the world, from aborigines to Antarctica. They are always mischief-making, shape-changing, highly intelligent creatures, who often act as a guide.” He sees them, largely, as positive forces. “I dislike the dark, demonic, devil-bird image they’ve been given by horror films in recent years,” he says. “It’s completely inappropriate. They are an interesting mix of good and bad, just like us. I think that’s why we’ve always identified with them.”

For the last year, Andrew has been working on a picture-book which features an office worker who follows a raven and discovers a new inner life. “I’ve always thought that there was a strong narrative element to my paintings, even if on the surface they just look like a portrait of a bird, or birds. I could always find a story there, but I discovered that wasn’t true for everyone else.