$149.00
This artwork is on display at Rendezvous in Dayboro.
It is not for sale online. You can view and purchase it in person at this location.
A Tawny Frogmouth in bold original ink, half hidden in loose brushstrokes, drawn in Dayboro, Queensland.
Walk any stretch of bush around Dayboro and there is a fair chance a Tawny Frogmouth is watching you pass. These birds are Australia’s quiet masters of disguise. They flatten their feathers, stretch their necks skyward and hold so still that they vanish into the branch they sit on. Most people walk within metres of one and never know it. That is the game this drawing plays. ‘Do You See Me?’ puts the bird front and centre on clean white paper, yet the loose strokes still ask your eye to find it, the same way it has to work in the bush.
The drawing is black ink on white, worked fast and kept honest. Gestural brushstrokes carry the streaky, bark coloured chaos of frogmouth plumage, while flicks of splatter scatter around the body like leaf litter and shadow. Ink suits this bird. It dries where it lands, it cannot be fussed over, and that rawness mirrors feathers that always look a little windblown. Out of all that movement, two things hold firm: the upright posture and the round, unblinking eye, fixing you with the stare a frogmouth gives when it knows the disguise has failed.
I drew this piece in my studio in Dayboro, Queensland, where frogmouths are neighbours rather than research subjects. Their soft, low oom call threads through the night here, and by day a pair will often park themselves on the same branch for weeks at a time. Working from that daily familiarity rather than a single reference photo, the aim was never a tidy feather map. It was presence. The way the bird holds its ground, sure of its own invisibility, and quietly dares you to notice it.
A note for the bird lovers: the Tawny Frogmouth is often called an owl, and this piece keeps that nickname in its title, but the species actually sits closer to the nightjars. It hunts with that huge gaping beak rather than with its feet, which only adds to its odd, endearing character. The artwork comes framed and ready to hang, and it carries an embedded augmented reality experience. Point your phone at the drawing and the piece opens up beyond the paper. There is exactly one of these in the world. When it finds its wall, that is where it lives.
Do You see me? Australian bird, the tawny frogmouth owl
This artwork is on display at Rendezvous in Dayboro.
It is not for sale online. You can view and purchase it in person at this location.
