Parrot 1981

Zoe Lerman created this painting, titled Parrot, likely in 1981, using a combination of soft blues and whites. The composition is immediately striking with its dominant, vertically oriented parrot cage, rendered in translucent blues, which seems to hover over the human figures below. Lerman's brushstrokes are loose and expressive, almost as if the forms are emerging from a dream. The figures are not clearly defined, challenging our perception and inviting us to question fixed meanings. The parrot, a traditional symbol of mimicry and repetition, along with the human figures, suggests a deeper exploration of representation and reality. Note how the artist destabilizes established meanings. The boundaries between the human and the animal, the captive and the free, are blurred, prompting us to reconsider these categories. This painting is an invitation to explore the fluidity of identity and the instability of meaning.