Painting Birds



Jukey in the Jungle--Boynton Health Services-Uof MN

 Jukey in the Jungle is hanging in the Eye Department at Boynton Medical Center at the U of MN. As a graduate of the university, I donated this painting while I had a show in the gallery there. Isn't the Eye Department the perfect place for this colorful jungle scene? I really had fun putting my silly parrot in an imagined scene. I needed something for the right hand corner and painted some flowers like I had seen at the Vet Clinic. I am certain the people in the waiting room must have thought that I believed them to be real while photographing them from a couple of angles. Oh, the life of a painter! We are caught in odd moments of observation or worse--taking photos of plastic plants--anything for our art.






African Bee Eaters

Does the composition for the African Bee Eaters look a bit like the Mount Kenya painting in the post below? This was painted as a commission for an esteemed retiring professor. They gave me a list of birds that she liked and I picked the European Bee Eaters, because they are very colorful and I had actually seen the African version while travelling there. I started a composition of seven birds that had a corporate team look about them. One bird seemed in charge with others clustered about the leader, but something wasn't working. The background was too fuzzy and painting the twigs they perched on would have required the steady hand of Neil Sherman to carry it off.  I made a bold move and restarted the painting four days before the deadline. All was painted wet on wet and the flying bird was added on the third day to round out the composition. As fate would have it Dr. Joseph and her husband had also seen these birds in Africa. It was a reminder of their trip there. I am so grateful I listened to the little voice in my head and trusted that I could make it work.