"Walton Ford has been likened to 19th century naturalist John James Audubon for his realistic old-master style watercolors, but while the nine works on view now at Paul Kasmin may resemble Audubon in style, they go much further in content. Ford’s second series of watercolors is based on a passage from Audubon’s memoirs that Ford found particularly disturbing. In the passage (quoted in full on the exhibition’s web page), Audubon describes witnessing a full-grown monkey murder his pet parrot. “He certainly showed his supremacy in strength over the denizen of the air, for, walking deliberately and uprightly toward the poor bird, he at once killed it, with unnatural composure,” writes Audubon." - Adriano