“Seeing a Sandpiper”  

Size 30″ x 24″

Acrylic on Canvas

Date 08/09/22

Suggested Min Price £100

Notes

There was this beautiful delicate photo of a flock of Western Sandpipers (& 2 Sanderlings). I have failed to achieve this delicateness and blend of colours, but dare not alter it again.

The first thing I learned was that they land on one leg. Of course the photo highlighted focus. The nearer birds were sharp in focus and increased fuzziness gave distance. I wanted to paint this 3D effect on a 2D canvas.

I thought of “The Mona Lisa ” and “Monarch of the Glen ” where a Portrait and a Stag were dominant against an in-focus Italian & Highland scene respectively. That is impossible.

Stare at an object across the room. Without moving your head or eye, what do you see outside a small focus circle? I now know it is only 10 deg. There is no loss of colour or fuzziness, but the verticals in particular become indeterminate, perhaps because we have two eyes and 2 haves of brain. 

They get worse with distance from the centre. You still know what the objects are though. Your eye/brain then without you knowing it scans the field to complete the vision via re-focussing. Like a movie or TV screen.

Initially this painting tried fuzzines for the more distant or wider birds but I felt it necessary to keep the front triangle of birds in focus like a painting within a painting. But after a month, and much debate, on the date above, I went the whole hog and kept only one bird in focus on a large canvas.

Strangely enough, standing in front of the painting and focussing on the blackened wings, it achieves very near what I wanted.

A unique painting experiment?

It was finalised on the date of the Queen’s Death.