Reality

I painted this Canada Goose many years ago from a photo and intended the picture to be an entry for the U.S. Duck Stamp contest. The medium is watercolor. As it happened, I painted a second version in oils that I did enter. (It didn't win, alas, as Duck Stamp afficionados are well aware -- else I would be famous....) I present it now as a sharp contrast to the other images that appear on this site. For me, this is as close to "realism" as my painting comes -- so far. What interested me as I painted this picture, what still interests me, is not the element of illusion but rather the abstract and/or formal qualities of painting -- the seeing things in terms of lines, colors, tones and proportions and the exploration of all these visual relationships in the act of noticing them.

Also, I liked the goose -- the actual goose -- who was both beautiful, hungry and wary. He (she? anyone out there know?) came up to be photographed because I was handing out food and because the place was popular with tourists and the animals had grown accustomed to a human presence and attention.