Plate 55 |
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Content: Revealing the Outcome of Human-Animal Interactions
Art
This painting of an Evening Grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) shows what can happen when the techniques of photo-realism pull us into a scene that we fully believe is a real place. Here we meet a bird at eye level and view the landscape as it is reflected back from the fender and hubcap.
Those familiar with Evening Grosbeaks can immediately identify the bird, and those familiar with Studebakers will surely recognize the Champion. The painting is so convincing that the bird seems ready to hop from its perch at the first sign of danger. The realistic rendering encourages a closer look as viewers try to decipher the reflections in the metal for more information about the locality, the car, and the bird. (The tires are modern narrow-banded whitewalls, not the broad-banded ones that would have come with the car originally, and they are clean, so it looks as though the car may still run.) The aesthetic elements--the truncated car, the palette, the bits of yellow that move the eye around the composition, the balance of bright and dull, light and dark, massive and fragile,
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