Chickadees Speed Dating

 

Speed Dating Chickadees, 2021, Oil on Panel, 9"x12"

The chickadees have returned in full force.  I thought they would be perfect metaphors for the human practice of speed dating.  They flit around so quickly like the ADHD of bird world.  

On Seeing

 

Spring, Mink Cove Marsh, 2021, Oil on Panel Diptych, 36"x48"

I painted a single canvas of this view many years ago and decided to take a new go at the same view when my gallery (Rogers at the River Shops) requested some larger works for a specific display.  Under new ownership and associated more closely with the attached design studio, the gallery will set aside an area for my work and display it in a vignette that illustrates how the work would appear in a home.

Below is a section of a poem I came across by Fernando Pessoa.  

The essential thing is knowing how to see,

Knowing how to see without thinking,
Knowing how to see when you see,
And not thinking when you see
Nor seeing when you think.

But this (alas for those of us whose souls wear clothes!)
This requires long study,
An apprenticeship of unlearning.

Fernando Pessoa

Bandit Series: Red-winged Blackbird

 

Bandit Series: Red-winged Blackbird, Oil on Panel, 8"x8"

Bandit Series: Red-winged Black Bird, A Work in Progress

 

Bandit Series: Red-winged Black Bird, Oil on Panel, 8"x8"

Today I worked both the ribbon, the head and a bit on the back.  I'm at that stage where the next session will allow me to strengthen the value contrasts. 

Bandit Series, A Work in Progress

 

Bandit Series: The Red-winged Black Bird

I'm always trying to think of some way to make the bird paintings more than just an ornithological work.Here I initially thought to have two birds holding a ribbon between them in their beaks.  Then, to have one holding the ribbon.  Finally, I decided the ribbon should be draped to create more movement.  My House Critic's first take was, "that looks like a worm."  (Hmmmm.  Thought for a future series.). This series will be called Bandit and include items a bird may have taken for nest building.  This guy will be very busy nest building as the bird is a highly polygynous species with as many as up 15 female mates. 

Mama's Purple Irises

 

Mama's Purple Irises, 2021, Oil on Panel, 8" x 8"

My mother loved purple, anything purple. The above painted irises are the descendants of her mother's many varieties of which my mother continued to propagate.  The purple were her favorite, and she sent me home to Massachusetts with a suitcase full of rhizomes dug out of her Arkansas garden.  Among the many that made the trip, I was lucky enough to have these purple.   

Fat Finch #2

Fat Finch #2021, Oil on Panel, 5"x5"

 

This is the second painting of my round friend here.  Finches can have great variety in their form.  They can be long and thin, round and plump, petite and delicate.  It all depends on how they pose.