Bird and boat.
I wonder
how you stay afloat.
Boat and bird,
Boat and bird.
With water
and with wings, I’ve heard.
Bird and Boat
Sally Swain © original art
teeny watercolour in journal
There’s much I could
say.
I could say that birds began to appear in my art in 1998, after a friend died.
They were bird-women, actually. The very first one was a large painting, larger than I’d ever done before, of a flame-like wing and part of the body flying up up up. I called it Passionwing. And it forms part of my ‘This is Not an Angel’ intermittent series of bird-women.
Passionwing
Sally Swain © original art
I could say that boats and teacups began appearing in my art around the same time. Small friendly vessels. Containers. The little boats attracted bobbles, sheet music and fringeing.
Float
Sally Swain © original art
I could say that after a brief holiday overseas earlier this year, I kind of discovered Australian birds for the first time. I tuned in to their song.
I learned to love the funny old magpie, which I’d been wary of since the days of head-swoopings while walking across the paddock to school.
I could say that
never before have I knowingly painted
a Bird and a Boat
together in one picture.
So simple.
So simple.
It’s healthy for me to be simple sometimes. I’m usually so unsimple, so layered, textured, full and fast in my art-making.
Do you let yourself be simple, sweet and clear sometimes?
Actual bird and boat
Art and Soul Space 
It’s so hard to be simple, isn’t it! But birds and boats are a lovely combination. Did you grow up with the boats and birds of The Story about Ping? Just reading on Wiki now that the illustrator of that book, Kurt Wiese, was a prisoner of war in Australia where the animal life inspired him to start sketching again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wiese
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Gallivanta – thank you so much for your response. Good to know I’m not the only one struggling to be simple sometimes. (That’d be an oxymoron, a contradiction in itself, wouldn’t it? Struggling for simplicity?)
Yes did love Ping. Thank you for the Kurt Wiese info. Children’s book illustrators are vital to our budding imaginations. And so often hidden behind the scenes. In terms of our knowing their names.
A bit like screenwriters being hidden behind directors and celebrity actors.
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Exactly! And I wouldn’t have thought to look if your photo and art hadn’t snapped me back to my love of The Story about Ping.
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Great to be having a ‘live’ chat with you. So glad to snap you back to Ping. What a duck!
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And your response in turn inspires me to further explore bird and boat relationships through painting.
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Wonderful.
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