Bird Portraits

The collection of more than 30 oil paintings of bird heads came about in 2006 when I decided to abandon printmaking as my major means of artistic expression. It was a wrench to sell my 30 inch etching press and make the change to painting, but I needed a new challenge. The bird portraits became an interesting subject for me to develop new skills in an unfamiliar medium. 

Many of the ideas came from the display cabinets in the public galleries of the SA Museum. At that time I was unaware of the thousands of bird specimens held in storage in the ornithology department at the museum. Although they were stuffed, I tried to make them appear lively and cheeky as birds are, with a sense of their characters as in life.