Study for Bluebirds
© 2015
Media: oil on paper
Location: 20*20 House Gallery
Hover/tap here for Price $450 unframed
12 x 8 inches (31 x 20 cm)
I often render leaves with crossing brushstrokes that resemble birds. In one painting that effect made the spots of sky in the foliage look like blue birds, so that gave me my start here. It was in the middle of winter and I saw an ad for the Caribbean with a woman in a sarong and I just had to invite her in. A figure seen from behind is a way to put humanity and scale in a composition without having them dominate the agenda of the painting. In this case, it was also a way to give me an escape, and I hope it works on other viewers in that way too.
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For those of you with low vision:
This painting depicts a bright day on a beach, a blue seascape, with a sycamore tree full of autumn's yellow leaves in the foreground and a deeply tanned woman in a yellow towel seen from behind. It is painted in transparent paint on several transparent layers of clear resin, letting ambient light bounce around within the painting. The palette is essentially just yellows, with siennas, and cyan blues. The eye is led to the interstices between the leaves where the sea or sky is glimpsed in blue shapes that metamorphose, rising up toward the top of the painting, into birds, a flock of bluebirds against a yellow sky.
