Cardinal on Branch

Cardinal on Branch

8" x 10", Acrylic on canvas, $145.

In the past, one of my instructors painfully explained to me that all paintings must be painted using "one style", meaning that if you are going to paint abstractly then the entire painting must reflect that, or, if you are going to paint realistically, the entire painting should reflect that. Well, I thought a lot about that and I have to say, that while I love many styles of painting, I am unable to settle on just one. I love the color and expression in Helen Frankenthaler's work, I love the thick paint and intense realism of Wayne Thiebaud, oh, and Richard Diebenkorn is amazing, Franz Kline, Frida Kahlo, John Gould's birds, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jules Olitski, Abbey Ryan, Carol Marine, the Akan tribe of African women sculptors.....Okay, I could fill many pages with artists I feel are wonderful all for different reasons. My point is, I can't just choose a style, and then make it so. I indulge myself by painting my backgrounds in an expressionistic way, and my focal points as realistically as I can. I love the immediacy and the surprise of painting wildly and the "in the zone focus" of painting each bird feather and hummingbird toe.
"Cardinal on Branch" is a good example of what I am trying to achieve. I love the freeness in the green background, the looseness of the branch, and the precision with which the cardinal is painted. You may have noticed, I have a bit of a problem naming my work. While some paintings almost demand to be named making the choice easy, apparantly, others just don't want to be named, thats how you get "Cardinal on Branch". And so, naming my paintings is still a work in progress. Thanks for looking!

Penelope