“I’m Watching You” 6×6, oil on gessoboard, $75 [button link=”http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/denise-hopkins/im-watching-you/231207″ type=”big”] Buy Now[/button]

I started this little guy last night because I was in love with the bright blue feathers running down his back.  Still painting birds for so many reasons, but this morning I saw a bluejay atop a fire hydrant; he was still and watching.  I tried to take a picture of him but couldn’t zoom in close enough before he flitted on to his next activity.  Birds are never in one spot very long but seem (and this is, of course, me projecting my own human experiences onto little thoughtless birds) utterly present while they are there.

I like that birds move and then sit for no apparent reason.  I watch birds, I don’t study them scientifically.  I know there are probably very logical explanations for their seemingly strange behavior.  But I’d like to think they are content and frivolous, joyful and ambitious, playful, determined.

As I was finishing this one this morning, I couldn’t help but keep one eye on yesterday’s painting.  Something about the color scheme started screaming 1980’s hotel art.  I hesitated to work on it more.  After all, I had already posted it (as though posting a painting gives it some permanent layer of varnish or dignity with which one cannot or perhaps should not dare to tamper).  Screw it.  I used the blues from today’s paintings on yesterday’s, and I’m quite happy with the result.  Happy to move from one panel to the next, hopefully, fully present at each, focused only at the brushstroke at hand, not the one looming in the distance.  Are we tired of bird metaphors yet?