This is a detail of a larger painting I am currently working on. It’s been a struggle. I used to paint birds years ago, and then turned away from them. I’m not sure why, maybe because I became more interested in exploring beyond the subject of the painting. I had more I wanted to say about painting than merely depicting a subject, which seemed a bit shallow to me. I had deeper waters to explore.
So I took a detour, a path around the subject and focused on creating a sense of place, movement and light, the intangible aspects of painting. It continues to this day.
And now I am back again, with a bird, because I haven’t finished what I started to say about them. Such ethereal creatures they are to me, here now then gone in a heartbeat. I am on the cusp of a certain quality I have been searching for and it’s exhilarating, liberating and paradoxically filling me with apprehension. It’s like painting while holding my breath, reaching for something through the fog, something only felt, unseen and just out of reach.
Reaching before it flies away.
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