Sunday, April 22, 2012

King's Move





"King's Move" is another painting in my exploration combining birds with human games or toy. Taking the birds out of their natural environment has been a stimulating way to push my creative thinking into new directions, while still keeping my primary focus on the birds.

The bird here is an American Kestrel, not really playing the game, but a participant.  The concept was quite vivid in my mind as I developed the composition, and I enjoyed working with the juxtaposition of elements.  Most of the time, my final painting ends up pretty different from the original concept floating in my mind.  This time the concept and the finished piece felt very similar.  

I am not a chess player, but I didn't want to make a mistake in placing the chess pieces on the board.  I found a website that illustrates the play-by-play of famous chess matches.  This match was played by Alexander Kotov against Ratmir Kholmov in 1967.  I don't know who won.  

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