“Seeing a Sandpiper”  

Size 30″ x 24″

Acrylic

Date 08/09/22

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? There is no loss of colour or fuzziness, but the verticals in particular become indeterminate, perhaps because we have two eyes. 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.