Fine Feathers

To create this extreme horizontal format my husband attached a 20x24 and a 16x20 set of American Easel Wood Painting Panels together for me. He use wood filler to smooth the surface on the front and used both screws and glue to adhere the panels together.

After the sketch was completed and the wood was primed, I completed an under-painting as I always do. I posted the underpainting to my Facebook fan page and had a couple of people ask why I would want to cover the painting with paper, because it was already so nice! I appreciated these compliments, but I try never to fall in love with my under-painting for just this reason.

"Fine Feathers", 20x40, collage of hand painted papers on cradled wood panel

Upon close examination of the final piece, I'm sure you will agree that covering the under-painting with my collage technique was still the way to go! I delivered this piece to the Grand Bohemian Gallery in Downtown Orlando and they are quite pleased with it. If you live locally, you can go downtown and see it in person!

Peacocks Completed

©St.Hilaire Nelson
Poised Peacock 1 & 2 | 20x24 | collage on panel

I gave you all the details on these birds in my last post, but I thought you might like to see them completed. Tonight I will be framing them and tomorrow they'll be delivered to Grand Bohemian Gallery downtown for delivery to their Asheville location!

More Progress – Barnyard Friends and Foul

Just off the Easel

24x20 as yet untitled, collage on panel

I recently did the head of a peacock and sent it up to Juxtapose Gallery in NJ, they sold it within a week. Then someone said they would like to see me do more of the body of the peacock in order to show the famous feathers. My very first tattoo was of a peacock, because of my love of Art Nouveau. So I set out to do a more complete peacock and this is what I came up with. 

I enjoyed incorporating some book pages and wrapping paper in the black/white/gray area in the lower right. I also incorporated some printed material concerning birds, migration patterns and their coloring, throughout the background. I enjoy hiding papers with relationship to the subject matter in all of my work, the longer you linger, the more meaning you will find hidden in the layers of torn paper.

Making small feathers is slow going, the yellow area took the most time but I am very pleased with it. In order to make this simplified area look believable, I used what I call "directional ripping" I tore the pieces and glued them in the direction of the 3-D shape, changing the size and angle as I wrapped around the shape of the back. 

Creating the famous feathers was indeed fun, I used a variety of blues and dark blues to create the "eye" in the feather. Several of them were created with nursery book pages from that old book my father gave me from my childhood, published in 1971. This is a little bit of personal history woven into the feathers of one of my favorite Art Nouveau icons.