Artist Scott Gustafson is fascinated by the English words used to describe groups of particular animals, such as, a pride of lions or a pod of whales. But there is also a wisp of snipes, a clutter of spiders and two of his favorites, a skulk of foxes and a parliament of owls. (The latter inspired a recent painting and Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Smallworks™ Canvas of the same name.)
“In that vein,” said the artist, “I wondered what a gathering of dragons might be called. Finding no name already given it seemed that a linguistic gauntlet had been thrown my way. Rifling both mind and dictionary I happened to stumble upon a wonderful word; confabulate, whose Webster definition is 1) ‘To talk informally; to chat. 2) To replace fact with fantasy in memory.’ As Thoreau once said, ‘Therewas pasture enough for my imagination’ and A Confabulation of Dragons was born.”
