The title They Startle Me Still refers to a quote in a letter written from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, referring to a pheasant that she wanted him to spare. I heard the quote ten years ago and it still resonates with me, summing up his feelings of nature that I express in this series.
“You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill. It is something to own a pheasant, Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn't ss if I thought it had a spirit. It is simply in its element. That gives it a kingliness, a right.”
The landscape is in North Iran, near the Caspian and the driveway is that of the Ramsar Hotel, a grand Pahlavi era building in the area that appears in several of my earlier works. The three figures, dressed in Pahlavi ceremonial clothes, are not holding guns, but are pointing to the three pheasants.