$349.00
This artwork is on display at LRB Retreat & Private Gallery Experience.
It is not for sale online. You can view and purchase it in person at this location.
Two Rainbow Lorikeets share a quiet moment in bold ink and watercolour, an original Australian artwork.
There is a particular kind of trust in this image. Two Rainbow Lorikeets have settled on the shoulders of a dark-haired woman, and neither bird looks ready to leave. One leans towards her ear as if passing on a secret, the other watches from her opposite shoulder, feathers flared in green, orange and violet-blue. Colourful Whispers catches that split second when a wild thing decides you are safe. The woman’s face stays quiet and half turned, her flowing hair drawn in a few confident sweeps of black ink, so all the noise and colour belongs to the birds. It is an intimate scene painted with anything but timid marks.
The piece is built from ink and watercolour working against each other. Bold black brushwork sets the structure: the line of the shoulders, the fall of the hair, the sharp curve of each beak. Over and through that skeleton run loose washes of watercolour, wet enough to bleed where feather meets skin, dry enough to hold an edge where it counts. Splatter accents fly off the birds like sound made visible, small bursts of pigment that suggest chatter, movement and the constant restlessness of lorikeets. Nothing here is overworked. The energy of the brush is left on the paper, including the flicks and drips most painters would tidy away.
Anyone who has lived along Australia’s east coast knows these birds. Rainbow Lorikeets crash into Queensland gardens at dusk in screeching flocks, hang upside down from grevilleas, and will happily land on a shoulder if there is fruit or nectar on offer. That everyday familiarity is what gives the painting its warmth. This is not an exotic species observed from a distance. It is the backyard visitor, the companion of country life, the bird your kids can name before they can spell it. The artwork carries that easy relationship between people and wildlife that shapes so much of life in rural Queensland, where Running Duck Studio paints.
As an original, this is the only one there is. It suits a hallway, a reading corner or a child’s room equally well. The palette is lively without being loud, and the subject reads clearly from across a room. It also makes a considered gift for anyone who feeds the lorikeets off their verandah and swears the same pair comes back every afternoon.
Colourful Whispers
This artwork is on display at LRB Retreat & Private Gallery Experience.
It is not for sale online. You can view and purchase it in person at this location.
