Variations

I got some really positive feedback on the bird drawing I did, so I decided that while printing Soldier. Merchant. Man. (4"x6", mixed media on board) that I would also make some prints (Untitled), on paper from the image. I am really excited about them, but I am not sure if they should be worked into further. I like them for their simplicity -- the starkness of the white bird against the gray paper. I like the fact that the bird has just a wide open page to fly on (which now brings me to the desire to print this little bird all alone on a large paper...)

Then part of me thinks they should have something else to them. I'm not sure. Perhaps I need to leave it for a while and come back to it. I think art is so exciting in that way though...how you can work on something, leave it, and then come back to it months later and finally get what you wanted -- or just finally have it come together even though you didn't consciously know what you wanted. Soldier. Merchant. Man. was like that. I worked on it in February (at which time I only did the board using scraps of paper from an old book) and then again in June (?) when I drew the dead baby bird and then finally in August when I added the bird in flight. And it is exactly what I wanted in the end, but I didn't know it at the beginning.

Since I already had the screen made, and I love experimenting, I also pulled a version of it on green fabric. I love that too, but I have no idea what to do with it.

Finally, I had been constantly imagining a piece with a bird and a cage and shrunk the bird to work in Leonard (4"x6", mixed media on board). I like it. This is the second version I did, the first the cage was too high and I couldn't get the bird to balance correctly on the page.

And yes, I don't know what my new obsession with birds is, but they are so elegant and so fragile, I just love using them in my work.