The Blue Tower of Birdhouses: A Conversation with Kerry R. Thompson at The Armory Show

It started with the blue. I was walking the floor at The Armory Show when I saw a tower of birdhouses stacked high in a vibrant cobalt, set against what felt like a dystopian backdrop. The multiplicity of the forms caught me first, the sheer number of boxes piled on each other, and then the contrast pulled me in. It was both vibrant and bleak, hopeful and decayed. The closer I looked, the more it pressed on me, until I felt I had no choice but to ask about it. When I inquired if the artist was around, someone pointed across the booth. A moment later, I was in conversation with Kerry R. Thompson, and the work began to unfold.

Meeting Kerry R. Thompson

Thompson, who grew up in San Diego and earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2014, has been working as a full-time painter in Bushwick ever since. He was showing with the Academy at the fair, and when we met up, he described the series as Dovecote, birdhouse paintings rooted in medieval traditions and the Tower of Babel, but layered with questions about human responsibility to the natural world.

Dovecote and Its Meanings

The towers, he explained, are human structures built for other species, precariously perched on unstable bases. Their weathered surfaces suggest rising tides and corrosive winds, and the fact that the damage is heaviest on the bottom layers carries its own socioeconomic undertone. Higher tiers remain more pristine. “That is where those kinds of socioeconomic undertones come in,” he told me, and suddenly the balance of beauty and unease made sense.

Bacchanalia and Weaver Birds

Across the booth, another canvas offered a different kind of lesson. A circular still life bright with flowers and fruit was interrupted by a colony of weaver birds. Nests tangled through the bouquet. Thompson calls these his Bacchanalia paintings, works that stage a natural takeover of Dutch still-life tradition. The birds do not just visit the scene, they claim it, transform it, and turn it into a raucous village. For me, it felt like watching the natural world refuse to stay on the sidelines, insisting on its own presence.

The Surreal Orange of Cock-of-the-Rock

Nearby, a burst of surreal orange proved just as compelling. South American cock-of-the-rock birds perched in another banquet painting, so vivid they looked imagined. “They are real,” Thompson said, laughing at the disbelief they provoke. His intent was clear: to make the work feel loud, textured, almost fragrant, so that it spills past the canvas and into your senses.

Researching the Artist

Later, I read more about Thompson’s practice, and the conversation only deepened. His artist statement describes his work as both celebratory and critical, examining “the delicate and highly complex natural biological systems of the world and the human relationship to those systems.” He speaks of setting the “artifice and sterility of the diorama tableau” against the “dynamic cacophony of living systems,” aiming for what he calls a “transcendent wonder” at the interconnectedness of life. That phrasing matched exactly what I felt in front of the blue tower.

I also learned his career has already stretched far beyond Bushwick. He has exhibited in Germany, South Korea, and Monaco, participated in residencies from Leipzig to the Terra Foundation in Giverny, and has work in public collections including the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Yet in person, he kept it grounded. When I asked what he has learned along the way, his answer was simple: “Keep going. It is tough to work full time as an artist, but I absolutely love painting and cannot imagine not doing it.”

Reflections on the Exchange

What I carried from our exchange was not just the content of the paintings, but the way Thompson treats art as a daily practice of responsibility. He does not hammer his points with text or manifesto, he lets the paint argue, the birds nest, the blue tower lean. For me, standing there as a student in his booth, it felt like being reminded that even in unstable times, we can keep building, repairing, and offering shelter, one birdhouse, one bouquet, one startling orange bird at a time.

— Amon Focus