Fall Events

It's been a busy fall.  My painting "Scrabble" was selected for the annual juried exhibition of Birds in Art, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Musuem in Wausau Wisconsin.  This show is a very BIG deal, and I was happy to be a part of it this year.  My painting sold during the exhibition.  Birds in Art continues through November.

I just completed this California Quail--a small piece that was part of a benefit auction for the Woodson Museum during the opening weekend of Birds in Art.  Proceeds from the auction go towards future art purchases by the Museum.  

It's funny how sometimes the simplest paintings can be the most complicated.  I started this piece as two Quail--a male and female.  Both were positioned on a block, with clouds in the background and a blue square all around them.  But it didn't feel right.  So first I eliminated the clouds, then the second quail just didn't feel right, then the block went, and finally I decided to just keep the single male quail.  Sometimes simple is better.  I hope to have a limited edition print of this piece soon.

Finally, my painting Nuthatches in a Pepper Tree is included in the Society of Animal Artists 52nd Annual Exhibition at the Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum in Oradell New Jersey.  The show opened on October 1st and continues through December 31, 2012.  

www.lywam.org  www.societyofanimalartists.com

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.  

Scrabble

A new piece.  I enjoyed perching the bird, this time a male House Finch, on top of the scrabble tile.  It took a while to figure out the right object to put him on.  The red border was applied with a house paint roller,and the edge defined by blue masking tape.

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.

Nuthatches in Pepper Tree

A few years ago, I began painting two Red-breasted Nuthatches that were visiting our yard. I have always been drawn to the master Japanese woodblock artists of the 17-1800's, particularly Hokusai's prints of Nature. The Nuthatches felt like a perfect subject to try this kind of approach. It turned out to be a long, somewhat frustrating experiment. I began three different paintings, and never felt satisfied enough to complete any of them.

Just this past year, I took a fresh look at these paintings. I cut the first one into two smaller works that I then finished in oil. You can see them on a previous blog--Nuthatches #1 and #2. The second is this painting. I pulled out my gouache (as that was the medium I used when I started it) and was able to complete it. Sometimes, I just need the space that time brings to look at a piece in a new way.