Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Jays are Back in Town

While I plod away at this raven painting, some other paintings and drawings, finish my website and do all the other stuff in my life that needs my attention, I'll leave you with the sweet sounds of spring in my backyard. Steller's jays have begun nest building. My husband shot this 17 second (spectacularly uneventful) video 2 years ago when their fledglings where hopping about in our yard. Beautiful birds, but bold and noisy. The sound they make, right outside my bedroom window, fills me with fantasies of slingshots and BB guns. Nooooo, I would never, of course, but they do make crow caws sound like the Vienna Boys Choir.

Some of you may have seen this artist profiled on the popular website, My Love for You is a Stampede of Horses.

Kate MccGwire, creates sculptures with various organic mediums. Her pigeon feathered organic sculptures are full of grotesque beauty, fascinating yet disturbing.

7 comments:

p said...

ahhh, work! nice to see you can have fb and make art. i still am not fond of birds (note i've removed the word hate from my vocabulary) but it is interesting how your work does make me look at them differently.
and yes kates work is amazing!

Rebecca S. said...

Hello, and thanks for stopping by my blog today! Jays are pretty but their noise is like a kid having the worst kind of temper tantrum in the grocery store (loved your comment about the Vienna Boys Choir, btw). They are also bullies to the smaller birds, so they aren't my favourite either.
Great painting...

andrea said...

Oh my. I juried three shows today (an hour each) and this not-yet-finished painting of yours blows them all out of the water. Sorry other artists, but it's true.

Ellen said...

Paula- actually the bulk of the painting was done during my FB hiatus, busy with non art things for the rest of the week so allowing myself time on there, but next week, I think I'm going to stay on but tune out. I feel antisocial, but cutting out distractions really works for me.
Rebecca- Jays are aggressive, I've seen then take on the neighbourhood cats, nobody messes with them.
Andrea- You can't believe how much you made my day.

Melody said...

Love, love, love those ravens

ArtPropelled said...

Lol.... birds can be noisy! We have hadedas that sound like a tribe of demented babies crying.
I absolutely love this raven painting!

Ellen said...

Thanks for the comment Robyn and I apologize for my tardiness in replying. I just spent about 15 minutes trying to found a sound clip for hadedas with no luck. A 'tribe of demented babies' (love it!) is too colourful a description not to peak my interest.