Chincol

Andean Sparrow

I always got this sparrow confused with the ‘house sparrow’, assuming they were the same species. There weren’t many of them around, especially compared to the constant presence of house sparrows, and as a child—shaped by the film Gremlins—I used to imagine these ones as the “evil” versions of the sweet house sparrows, because of their spiky, striped crown that reminded me of Stripe, the first-born Evil Gremlin.

If I had to say why I chose it as inspiration for this artwork, it’s simply because that silly thought takes me straight back to my childhood: afternoons with my siblings trying to catch them in poorly made traps that never worked, and of course, the quiet beauty in the details of their feathers.

It’s not an especially exciting story, but it brings me back to those years when I could genuinely wonder about a bird’s character and imagine them on a scale of “which gremlin are you today.”

Dimensions: 25×25 CM