“Time is on my side.” Painted November 2022. 16”x16”. Acrylic on stretched Canvas.
This is the third painting in my series about coastal birds. The Great Blue Heron is a common visitor to the Twin Eagles Bluff. They nest in a rookery, high in the trees only a few hundred meters away from the house. With a nest full of clacking and squawking chicks to feed, the adults spend a considerable amount of time fishing on the shore of the Salish Sea. Although they don’t let you get close, it is common to find several herons standing motionless on the shoreline rocks near the bottom of our ramp. If birds can attain a transcendental state, then the heron is a sensei master and the personification of patience.
As with the other paintings in this series, I’ve chosen to keep the background highly abstracted. There are few details to identify this part of the coast which allows the bird to hold the focus of the painting. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to capture the “shagginess” of the Great Blue Heron plumage.