Acrylic Painting from the Pigeons Series again - The Gathering

Here is another painting from the Pigeon series again. And again I start with the WIP of this painting. The background of my obsession with pigeons you can read here and here. I am living with pigeons, caring for them, dreaming of pigeons and working with them. And they are a big joy in my life despite all the work and time I need for them...
The Gathering is about a whole pigeon family, the first one who lived on our balcony with their first offspring: Pete and Emily, Willy and Joey, their sons...

Willy is the one in the middle with his white cap, Pete is towering over everybody else, mother Emily is the one on the left and Joey is the one on the right side. Sadly Pete and Emily have gone over the rainbow, Willy and Joey have left many years ago.

Willly was living on our balcony with Winnie, his mate and sister. Then he caught the PMV virus (paramyxovirus), became very sick and was hospitalized inside for many weeks. He could not eat by himself, nor drink and he could not fly any more. With lots of care and love he recovered again completely even learned to fly again. Sadly his longing for being free again became too big and so one day he left, leaving his sick mate behind. I don't know anything about his whereabouts. I wished I knew....
But I have wonderful memories even if some of them are bitter sweet....

Here is the painting process in chronological sequence. I started with Willy's funny face....

Here I was working on Emma's face. Emma was rather a nondescript and petite little pigeon at first view but if you watched her for a while you would have realized that she had quite a personality. She was very brave and courageous and was not afraid of defending herself and her babies from much larger pigeons, especially cocks. A pecularity were her eyes which somehow had an Asian touch – I hope I could demonstrate this in the painting. Emma also had a wonderful collar of iridescent little feathers, whose strong metallic shimmer appeared only in full sunlight. These feathers alone were inspirational for any painting…

The last face I finished was Joey's, a very sweet little pigeon boy. As usual he also left one day to start his own independant life. If I only knew where he is right now....

Finally the painting was finsihed and here it is:

"The Gathering"

26" x 18"

Acrylic on cotton

Some more details of the finished painting are below...

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