Color and Movement Take Wing
Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel
With their aerial acrobatics and colorful plumage, birds are a welcome sight to sailors and surfers looking out to the horizon. They’re also an inspiration to artists.
Surf and beach artists Heather Brown, William R. Beebe and Ron Croci often include birds in their seascapes.
Depicted in a variety of styles, artists from Vincent Van Gogh to Pablo Picasso have made birds the subjects of their paintings.
Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo, Hiroge…
Andrew Wyeth and Andy Warhol have all succumbed to their spell.
One of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings The Magpie makes the tiny bird perched on a gate in a snowy landscape the focal point and helped to launch the Impressionist period.
The most well-known bird artist of all, John James Audubon (1785-1851), brought attention to the vast number of bird species in America. His detailed, lifelike paintings of birds in their natural habitats showed viewers birds they had never seen before.
Sometimes even the birds themselves are inspired to paint – like Zeppy this salmon-crested cockatoo at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
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