Pavlova

The Struggle Continues

This morning, I rolled out of bed a little later than usual because I made the mistake of perusing Facebook on my phone while still under the covers instead of getting up and going straight into the studio. Sometimes this is okay if there’s a piece on the drafting table that is well on its way and all I have to do is decide which color I will play with. That was not the case today. I spent an hour or so yesterday searching for images of birds for future paintings. Toucans and flamingos in particular although the plan was to start on the revision of the hummingbird I painted in the early days of this series and use as my avatar on social media.

Most of the new paintings stem from much older birds that I no longer own but wish I did so I could change them. Once I blow them up - since this series is all much bigger than the format of the earlier work - I can really see what it is I want to change. And change they do. This vulture, Pavlova, for example - in the original, little version, she was grey on a red background. When I blew the image up, after reversing it too, it was clear there were all kinds of things wrong with her although the person who owns her loves it. First of all, I kept changing the shape of her head. The beak drove me crazy. It went through several palette variations, the background was silver for a while and the bird brown. Eventually, I settled on dark blue for the background and futzed with the bird itself until I was sick of looking at it. Finally, I decided it was done and framed it. But, when it was on the wall with the rest of the new pieces, at that point it was titled Moriarty and definitely male, I hated it. After a couple of months, I took it off the wall and out of its frame and decided not every piece would be successful. Two weeks ago, I pulled it out and began reworking again, primarily the shape of the head, although I kept the dark blue background. Suddenly, it all came together and I’m happy with her, since she’s definitely female now, and she is back in a frame and on the wall with her friends.

I have to remember this as I struggle with the new hummingbird because the old one, my avatar, doesn’t look like a hummingbird at all. I know this because even though the original sold at the opening of a juried show it was in, when people see the giclees and greeting cards I’ve made of it at the craft fairs I do, they always ask what kind of bird it is. Grackle is usually their first guess, but it doesn’t really look like one of those either. So this morning when I re-sketched the new piece, it became clear that it was going to be another Moriarty. Right now it looks more like a hummingbird but it has nothing in common with my avatar. Which is fine, it means I’m ready to let go of doing old bird revisions and work with something fresh and new. I see a toucan and a flamingo in my future.