"Chickadees are Easy and Fun"
8 x 10" Acrylic on Board, 2010
Chestnut-Backed Chickadee
$1,200
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This is one of two paintings in my "Easy and Fun" series. Due to the amount of time I must invest in each piece, I prepare fairly exhaustive studies before beginning work on a painting in earnest. The "Easy and Fun" paintings are a departure from this paradigm, which made them both very exciting and challenging. I began with two boards which I abstractly colored and textured without any inkling of what subject I would later incorporate. I went through my archive of reference photos and settled on these two birds. Of course I did pre-study work to make certain the birds’ anatomy and feathers were all in order, but then I loosened up. I enlarged my studies of both birds on a copier, inverted them, cut stencils to match, and set about sponging around the cutouts on these two boards, creating a negative shape where the stencil had been in the shape of the subject. Then I superimposed the birds and started painting. What’s unique about these pieces is that they developed very spontaneously as I went through the process. The result is two pieces that feel very fresh and different. They still have my sharp attention to detail, but only where it is absolutely necessary; all else is left to the whims of the artist, the surprise of the paint, and the simple realities of cause and effect.
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