I wanted to paint yellow.  And I had an image of an American Goldfinch that I have been trying to use for a long time.  But I knew I needed something else to make the bird image work with the yellow square.  I think I came up with the children's blocks as a way of linking the little bird with a human experience.  I always seem to be looking for ways to connect the birds I care about to the world that we live in.

This is the first of a series.  I have four more colors I would like to paint.

Colors

Early this spring, while waiting at the doctor's office, I had a bit of an inspiration looking at a Richard Serra drawings in an old New Yorker.  The drawing was a black irregular four sided shape on an off-white background.  My mind jumped to a bright colored background, and the irregular shape became a rectangle.  The idea of actually getting some bright color into my work was really thrilling.  I got some old cardboard and set about painting all kinds of squares, using first a watercolor brush, then a paint roller until I got the right effect.

Being me, I saw a bird in the middle of it all, but first had to get the right feeling to the border.