In 2006 I had the distinct honor of being awarded the Don Eckelberry Memorial Scholarship by the Society of Animal Artists, which afforded me a ten-day visit to the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad. Eckelberry was a bird painter who, with the help of the Florida Audubon Society, assisted plantation owner Asa Wright in converting her property into a world-renowned nature center in the late 60’s. It is a famous hotspot for birders to this day, and it certainly won my heart. The center itself, a sprawling former British Colonial Coffee plantation allowed to return to secondary growth rainforest, was so charming that I initially expected to spend every waking moment simply siting on the veranda and photographing the Honeycreepers, Tanagers, and Hummingbirds that visited the feeders, but before long the lure of field trips convinced me to explore the island more extensively. One of the first trips to strike my fancy was a visit to Caroni Swamp, where I was promised the potential to observe Trinidad’s National Bird, the Scarlet Ibis.

It is hard to describe how utterly surreal it is to see these birds in the wild if you haven’t done it. Especially in the green gloom of the mangrove swamps, they look impossibly, preternaturally red. Seem from a distance fluttering down to roost in the trees at dusk, my impression was of the sky filled with a cloud of red butterflies. Naturally I was disappointed when my photographs simply did not capture the color as I remembered it. I recall sitting at the computer and adjusting the saturation of my pictures when, in frustration, I pushed an adjustment bar all the way to one side, changing my ibis from red to golden orange. A push to the other side shifted it to shocking magenta. I printed the pictures out just for fun and was surprised when my mother, seeing them on my desk, asked what kind of bird it was. She was referring to the golden version. It occurred to me that these invented colors were no less unbelievable than the “real” colors, and the concept for “Third Time’s the Charm” was born. It was actually a huge challenge to paint these birds identically, changing only the color, but otherwise matching brushstroke for brushstroke in every detail. The result is a study in variation and repetition, and a piece that would prefigure the “Modern Camouflage” series I would begin in a few years, and my entire “Pattern” series of nearly a decade later. The repeated fleur-de-lis pattern in the background provides a non-objective counterpoint to this repeated avian imagery, while the curvilinear shapes echo the lines of the birds’ necks and beaks.