Symbol Bird

A couple of months ago I finished this bird, holding on to two colors above the water. I got a couple things working here which I'm happy about: 1) the color sticks are symbolic, I mean there are no blue and red reeds like this in the world, but they still work as real reeds which the bird is hanging on to (actually he's kind of 'stirring' the reeds). 2) the water ringlets at the bottom of the picture serve to make a bottom or ground to the painting although the background is one entire continuous color; without the ringlets the bird and color sticks would be floating in space a bit too much. 3) the bird is realistically painted - based on a drawing I made at the Naturhistorischemuseum - and it works well enough against the plain abstract background. I want to make more paintings in this space between realism and an abstract/symbolic space.

Stuffed Animals (paradisevogel)

various views of the stuffed bird

painting almost finished

side view of the bird, later flipped around for the painting

early stage of the painting

I made some detailed pencil studies of the stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum in Vienna (a wonderful museum in full on 19th century style). Somehow the birds attracted me, maybe because there is such a range or birds really - there must be almost one thousand different birds in the museum. I picked the paradise vogel, because it is really a most remarkable bird. I knew about the bird because I read to my children the Dr. Suess book about the vain bird who wants to have the longest, most pretty tail. She gets one, but then she can no longer fly. Well.... Dr. Suess apparently knew something about birds, because when you see the range of paradise birds out there, the length, elaboration, and raw ornamental quality of their feathers it makes you pause to think. As in... aren't birds meant to fly, and with this amount of superfluous feathering certainly not meant for getting into the air, is it anymore possible to fly? Isn't the point of the bird to fly? And that brought my thoughts to another point.... does everything really have to have a functional purpose? Can't a bird have elaborate feathers just to be beautiful? Doesn't beauty have a value, or does everything always come down to function, utility, survival? And then, what if we suppose beauty has a value, in and of itself, with no relation to function, just in itself, alone - beauty is beautiful because it is beautiful (not because it serves some other biological function). Well that is how I think about the paradise vogel! And she/he should be a standard to which we could aspire, no?

The painting mixes my interest in early renaissance paintings, specifically the way they depict a landscape, which is hardly visually accurate, but a kind of mixture between observation and idealization. My pretty paradise vogel is perched on a collection of real stones I've collected and for some reason unknown to me keep holding my interest. The painting technique is more old fashioned, done with thin layers of paint built up slowly (I am beginning to really like this technique!)

The pictures show a pencil sketch of the stuffed paradise vogel drawn in the museum, and an early stage, and a near finished stage of the painting. The finished painting will be posted soon.

EVIL PIGEON

So I'm eating a 'Doner' - lamb or chicken with onions, tomato, salad and yogurt sauce stuffed in a thick pita bread - on Mariahilferstrasse and I notice this pigeon standing at my feet. It's cocking its head around to look at me eating; it's waiting for crumbs; it has no fear. I feed it a couple crumbs. The pigeon reminds me of a dog begging at the table, and I'm starting to consider if a pigeon can be as smart as a dog - it sure is acting smart. A couple more crumbs.

And then the thing leaps at me! Alright, it kind of flaps it's wings and hovers in front of my face, or more exactly in front of my Doner. I swat at it and it hovers away, and then right back in front of my face. I see an evil red glow in this buggers eyes. He is persistant. Go away!! Get back on the ground like a good dog! Swat, Swat. He doesn't leave.

I end up moving on down the street.