This little birdie was created during a plein-air painting session in the summer of 2023. I usually paint solo, in my studio – when I paint outside, in a group, I find it much harder to concentrate on my surroundings, because there is often a lot of chatter going on. That is why I wanted to keep it simple and printed this reference from a free stock image on the internet.
It was still a bit of an experiment as I had never painted birds before, don’t ask me why! And I like how the colours came out. It is painted on a small canvas board and for the longest time I was musing about the best frame for the image.
Mother nature helped me out. I found some feathers in our backyard that, looking at the colouring, may have belonged to a bird of the same breed… I then remembered a transparent plexiglass frame that I actually purchased to display photographs in. When I put the bird painting in it, and added the feathers, the ensemble truly looked as if the gold finch was ready to take off after completing its enticing song! I feel it does the design justice. Of course, this is almost impossible to photograph because of the reflections of the light in the plexiglass. But I am sure you can look beyond that. And you can come to see the real thing in house if you are interested.
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