The Sleeping Blackbird

By Jennifer Baker

There are blackbirds in the valley where I live in Italy. They are so plain, seemingly so unremarkable, until they cut loose their sweet song. Here, the blackbirds sing in a cacophony back and forth to one another across the valley. They are a constant reminder of all the life we humans cannot know. Then one day, in midsummer, the blackbirds stop, usually around a full moon. There is a saying here that they go to sleep when the green is the greenest, to awaken again in the golden fall. It is a mystery. Like most things. This is the time of the sleeping blackbird. This piece stirs a sense of calm introspection and captures the ethereal interplay of light and shadow, inviting you to lose yourself, just for a moment get lost in a lush green world, still under the moon. Life with a beating heart. It's designed to bring an atmosphere of peace and contemplative beauty to any space. This painting was featured in Traditional Home Magazine in December 2025. The original was made in Italy and is now part of a private collection in Boulder, Colorado.