Price range: $59.00 through $69.00
Certificate of Authenticity Included
Every original artwork ships with a signed Certificate of Authenticity confirming title, medium, dimensions, and artist provenance. Created with archival-quality pigment ink on acid-free paper.
Original black ink drawing of a child in gumboots cuddling a chicken, sketched in loose, expressive strokes.
There is a particular kind of trust in the way a child holds a chicken. Back Yard Buddies catches that moment in black ink: a young child in gumboots, arms wrapped around a large feathered friend, while a second, much smaller bird balances on an outstretched hand. Nothing about the pose feels staged. The weight of the bird against the child’s chest, the slight lean of the small body to carry it, the open hand offered to the little one, it all reads as something seen in a real backyard on an ordinary morning, the kind of scene that lasts thirty seconds before the chook wriggles free.
The drawing is worked in loose, gestural strokes of black ink on paper. Some lines are dark and certain where the brush pressed hard, others trail off into dry, scratchy marks that suggest feathers without describing every one. Flecks of ink splatter sit around the figures like scattered seed, a record of how quickly the drawing came together. That speed matters. Ink allows no second guesses, so every stroke on the sheet was a decision made in the moment, and the finished sketch keeps the energy of that first pass. Up close you can follow the movement of the hand that made it; from across the room the marks resolve into a child, a bird, and a hug.
Back Yard Buddies was drawn in Dayboro, Queensland, where chooks wandering through the yard and kids in gumboots are part of daily life rather than a styled photo. It belongs to a series of country life drawings about the small friendships between children and animals, the ones that happen at ground level, well below adult eye height. If you grew up carrying a favourite hen around like a handbag, or you are watching your own kids do it now, this drawing will feel familiar the moment you see it.
As an original artwork, this is the actual sheet the ink went down on, not a print or reproduction. The monochrome palette sits comfortably in almost any room, from a nursery wall to a hallway of family pictures, and the loose linework holds its own in both modern and traditional frames. It suits parents and grandparents, keepers of backyard chooks, and anyone who collects black and white drawing with a bit of warmth in it. Pieces like this tend to become the one visitors ask about.
Back Yard Buddies
