beautiful colours!!

Wow, splendid!
What medium did you use? Oils?

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C(")(")
"I sleep to escape the reality of not being with you,
in the hope that I can find you in my dreams."

Thank you very much for your kind words Xaydes, much appreciated. Yes, most of my work is oil on canvas, with the odd watercolour, pastel, or acrylic thrown in if I feel the subject really wants it, but mostly oils or graphite drawings.

thanks gain,
Michael

Thanks again Rasberry, I deliberately chose a brightly coloured and detailed composition to try to win Queenslands most prestigious Wildlife Art exhibition, having scored a couple of runner-ups in previous years. I also entered a scrappy picture of a duck I only finished because my Mum insisted.

I was thrilled to find that I had in fact won first prize. I went to the Queensland Museum feeling quite validated and very clever only to find that the 'scrappy duck' was in fact the winner while this picture was completely ignored.

I can only conclude that I know stuff all about art.

those are nice moments to remember. i always feel privileged when an animal decides to trust me and let me close

and the painting is just awesome!

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-- you can't have everything. where would you put it?! --

Very kind, thank you. And you're right, there's not much better than these moments of contact, especially with such a tiny bird. It's almost inexplicable when things like this happen. These tiny things have natural predators, so why would he let a bloody great primate get so close? It wasn't stealth, he was looking right at me! Is it possible they can tell we won't harm them? Certainly huge mammals can. I saw that in the eye of a Humpback whale inches from mine, but such tiny things?
Who knows?

yep..

years back my boyfriend found a swallow on the road - just a baby still, probably fell out of the nest. dunno even was it he or she
anyway we kept her for a few weeks, feeding her, teaching her to fly... but the most special moments were like when i was lying on the bed and that tiny little thing was walking all over me, jumping on my stomach, walking on my face... no fear whatsoever, total trust - amazing. i felt very special at those times, to be able to experience such a trust from someone so little and fragile. was kinda touching really..

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-- you can't have everything. where would you put it?! --

That's amazing, a few years ago a mate called me to tell me he'd found a bird on the road, I came to his work to check it out, and I was stunned to find it was an Azure Kingfisher, in fact that's him in the painting. I looked after him for a couple of weeks and slowly he seemed to get better and soon was taking flights up and down my hallway. Unfortunately, just as I was ready to release him he took a turn for the worse. I rushed him to a vet but he had gotten a bug and didn't make it. That was real hard. An introduced pigeon is hard, but such a perfect and uncommon jewel which most people will never see really sucks. It's a tiny comfort to know that I've shown a lot of people what awesome things are all around them if they'll just look, and maybe caused a few to want to see a bird like this one day. I guess that's what stops me painting other subjects - the added bonus

sorry for the late reply, i was away on vacations..

too bad about the little bird.. but it's amazing alright! i like the word you used - jewel

your paintings show that you feel what you paint!

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-- you can't have everything. where would you put it?! --