SEA BREEZE SOARING. NO 1721.

From the series "It's all about the birds" FOR SALE.

I am looking forward to a wonderful day ahead that's if my hairdresser doesn't cut off too many of my curls before I get back to my gallery/studio to start another painting.

This piece of art painted in mixed media is

1metre wide x 1.5m high and one of two this size.

It's all about the birds. The yellow tailed black cockatoo is easily identified by its colouring. Happy, noisy, disruptive, interesting, and that is why they intrigue me.

I identify more to seeing the Red tails as they come from Northern Australia where I spent a large proportion of my life and maybe the reds will come into my series a bit further down the track.

This is the 6th painting in this series of the Yellow tail and even though they are a Northern bird I have used my artistic licence to put them any where I like just because I can. How about a cove somewhere in Southern Tasmania and I think Bruny Island will do just fine.

Cockies have always been a bird I love in all various colours and sizes. Most of us would refer to a cocky as a bird, though in Australia the word Cocky as I remembered it was my grandfather, as he was a wheat farmer (or wheat cocky). There are a number of cockies including cow cockies, cane cockies and wheat cockies. Cocky arose in the 1870s and is an abbreviation of cockatoo farmer. How's that for a bit of useless information.

I am using my trip to Bruny Island plus a little imagination to make up this painting. Some of the bays on Bruny were rather stunning for holiday makers and permanent residents who wish to have some solitude. Holidaying with some friends their children and my granddaughter gave me the idea to use this beautiful scenery and lovely green and blue hues in my palette. Then some of my silly Jelly Bean trees as one of my friends referred to them and the name has now stuck.

I have never been much of an ocean painter though the Indian Ocean in Northern Western Australia was a big part of our lives with nearly 30 years on and off the water and having owned and run a boat yard. Repairing buying and selling boats and all their bits and bobs with a fishing tackle shop attached. We owned a shack on Malus Island in the Dampier archipelago and I was married to a die hard fisherman and boating enthusiast, so why wouldn't we spend our spare time between the desert for my art and the ocean for his deep sea Marlin and Sail fishing, diving for crayfish and skiing. Collecting oysters off the rocks behind the shack and squid fishing in clear turquoise water from the pristine white sandy beaches, a wonderful lifetime of experiences for the whole family.

We had motor boats not yachts so you may find my attempt at painting yachts is a little fractured. I did go once on a yacht and found it very unsettling and that was in a harbour, so I never chanced the open ocean. I thoroughly enjoyed painting this peaceful scene until the noisy cockies arrived as they were the last bits added to this painting as a finishing touch.