30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day Fifteen

"Wordy Birds" - mixed media on canvas paper, 16" x 20"

Day 15!  Today I created a piece around the minions in one of my earlier paintings.  Full credit for the title to poet Mary Cox, who has a way with words like nobody else I know!  This piece met my goal of 90% painted without brushes.  Hooray!  Scrapers, sponges, paper towels and the occasional finger are all you need.

There appears to be a nighttime theme going on in my work this week, as I am completely fascinated with night skies and dark backgrounds.  There was an eerie, misty moon peeking through the cloud cover two nights ago on our evening walk, and I was dazzled by it.  What is it about the dark of night which brings out imaginings, mystery and a bit of fear even?  Instinctive caution and wariness, I suppose?  We humans didn't always live in an illuminated  world at night.  Everything beyond the campfire had the potential for harm.

We finally saw "The Revenant" yesterday afternoon.  Beautiful, brutal and haunting.  By the end of the movie, I was feeling rather in survival mode mentally (even from my comfy reclining chair in the posh theater) and a bit on edge, even.  Grateful that I never had to crawl inside an animal corpse to keep warm during a harsh winter night, I came straight home and started painting these whimsical birds to sooth my own sensitive psyche.  And it worked.

Whimsical art: the cure for anxiety?  The next movie we see will have to be animated, I think!

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