Red Bird Painting

"Red Bird"

24"x48" Oil on Canvas

2011

Often when I am trying to come up with an idea for a painting or if I’m just plain bored, I will draw some random lines on a piece of paper then try to see an object in the lines I draw.  I guess it could be compared to finding pictures in the clouds.  This painting started off with a line that looked similar to a question mark without the dot at the bottom (?).  It reminded me of the neck of one of those huge birds that hang around the water.  A heron or a flamingo or something like that.  So I decided to make it into a painting.  I didn’t look at any pictures of birds when I painted this, I just painted it as I thought it should look.  So I guess I’ve got some kind of imaginary bird here.

 

I’ve always been interested in ancient forms of text from cultures like the Sumerians and the Egyptians.  I had also become a fan of Jose Parla and Renta’s work for a while and I really enjoy how they incorporate types of writing and text in their pieces.  So I decided to try to come up with some kind of written text of my own.  I suppose you could call it a “font” if you’d like, since each symbol represents a letter in the English alphabet.   You can see what I came up with on the right side of the painting.  This was my first use of this text in my paintings and I have since used it many more times.