One Red Bird

Above is a detail shot of the star of the show

One Red Bird

Oil on Board
24 x 24 Inches

Click on the image for a larger view if you like

This painting began with the idea of illustrating genealogy , and as I painted the birds with blues, greens, umbers and siennas, I realized that it would need a focal point to make it pop because it is already such a quiet painting. Enter the red bird. I resisted the urge to add more marks and lines and have been able to leave it alone so far. I've been asked what the marks and lines represent (artists are often looking for the concept and the deeper meaning,) and to tell you the truth, I am often just having fun with cleaning off my brush and plain old like the way those marks look.

Four Birds

Four Birds
9 x 9 Inches EACH
Oil on Board
Click on the image for a larger view if you like

When I started painting nine years ago, I wasn't at all interested in working on small pieces. I think I've even mentioned in a previous post that my first piece was on a five by five FOOT canvas - what was I thinking? Lately, I've really been enjoying the smaller pieces, and I think Four Birds is the smallest I've done. The next piece is 24 x 24 inches, though, with thirteen or fourteen birds. Yes, more birds, but I find it painful to complete a piece if I don't find the subject interesting to look at, so you'll never see me paint a rock.

Three Birds

Three Birds
Oil on Board
9 x 16 Inches

A couple of posts ago, I showed you the beginning - an outline, really - of another painting of birds, and this is the final outcome. Although I'm happy with the way they turned out ( fat, fluffy, and messy), one of the best parts of this piece was barely painted. It's the flaw in the wood in the top right hand corner. That flaw is the reason I chose this piece of wood to paint on . It's all the imperfections in these paintings that make them interesting to me; the random drips on the birds that don't make any sense, and the squiggles of paint that we understand to be feathers but don't look like them at all. Everything that is only indicated is a success.

Click on the image for a larger view if you like.

Xerxes

Xerxes

12 x 16 Inches
Oil on Board

This is a portrait of my husband on holidays - trying to grab five minutes to himself before the kids tackle his lap.

Birds, Birds and More Birds

My daughter recently had a very important religious celebration, and as a gift, our dear friends made and gave to her a beautiful mobile of hand sewn birds on branches. Click on the image if you'd like to get a better view of them - they really are so stunning. K meticulously put them together, and the lack of inconsistency in her stitches is amazing; and M made the branches, weighting them perfectly so the mobile doesn't so much as slant. He made the weights out of brass, and painted them to match the wood. They are both artists and are very creative.

So, although I recently wrote that I won't be painting birds for a while, here I go again. I've been inspired by the mobile. This image is a look at the first three layers and drawing of my bird addiction. I expect that there will be eight to ten more layers of paint before they're done.

Oliver

Oliver

24 x 24 Inches
Oil on Board

This summer we were in British Columbia and visited the Burrowing Owl Estate Winery, which was one of the most beautiful places I've seen in Canada. This painting is a combination of three images that I took on the trip. The landscape is from the Burrowing Owl vineyard, and the house is borrowed from an acreage that was a few miles away from it.

Blue Birds

Blue Birds
9 x 16 Inches
Oil on Board

This is the last of the bird paintings for a while, but I'm sure I'll change my mind within a month.