Picture Profile 2104: “The Jay’s Feather”
“The Jay’s Feather” (Rhododendron ponticum, white Japanese Anemones and garden snail shells). Artist Code 2104. Completed 26 May 2021.ORIGINAL – Gouache on A3 Royal Talens van Gogh black water colour 100% cellulose paper 140lbs
SOLD: 29 October 2022, private sale. This painting has gone off to join its “sister” painting ( Artist Code 2013). Lovely.
This is the second little painting done on the Royal Talens black paper. As I liked the Anemones in Artist Code 2013 (pink ones), I decided to re-use my traced pencil sketch and do them in white, but have also added a sprig of Rhododendron and some garden snail shells and, of course, the Jay’s Feather. I have lots of little specimen jars full of nature’s critters and their remnants (all deceased in natural circumstances, I might add), including the hide of a hedgehog, a badger skull, and blue tit’s nest which was ravaged by a cat’s paw (very sad as all the babies were killed and one of the parents. All our nest boxes in the garden now have protective wire to stop that ever happening again. Ironically the other parent bird we believe was also killed, but this time by a Sparrowhawk. I also have another nest with baby blue tit skeletons after a colony of bees invaded the blue tits box and frightened off the parents. The bees then proceeded to make a nest for a little while, then left in free abandonment.
