The unseen real world, which casts shadows on Plato’s cave wall, can only be glimpsed through a lens of         canaries.

The canary is a sticker earned for good effort.

The canary is a complicated expressionist brush stroke equipped with an eye (which returns the gaze).

The canary is a reference point of emotional scale just as a climber seen on a mountainside serves as an indicator of physical scale.

The neutral, inscrutable canary induces a classic Freudian transference, allowing the viewer to discharge repressed psychic energy toward the therapeutic stand-in.

The canary is a device of ritual as well as formal utility - a cross between a rabbit’s foot and a Swiss army knife.

The first canary is you looking at my painting. The second one is me looking at you looking.

In Hebrew prayers the word for God is not said out loud; a standard substitute word is pronounced each time the word God is read. Like the standard substitute word, the canaries are a stand-in - perhaps for what is not seen or should not be painted.

The painted canary on a landscape, a simple figure ground relationship, is a paradigm of maximum effect from minimum means. The human capacity for recognition is the only leverage that need be applied.

They are hex distlefinks.

They are pets, which are a metaphor for a perfect relationship based on total misunderstanding; needs coincide, every expectation seemingly fulfilled because communication is rudimentary or nonexistent.

The canary is a kōan