Original artwork description:

‘WHO doesn’t love a Willie Wagtail? That ubiquitous chatterbox, that neighbourhood gossip, that social butterfly flicking his tail feathers from side-to-side in fantastic flirtation.’ Claire Dunn

It’s hard to believe that I painted this only a couple or so weeks ago in Australia. Now, in lockdown in France, the surroundings are very different. This little abstraction was painted from life in the Aussie outdoors, and depicts a small bird launching itself off the tree branches into flight. I don’t know the correct Latin nomenclature for it, but when we were kids at school, we used to call them Willy Wagtails, so that is good enough for me. It was a very hot day when I painted it, and I took the Jambox with me to play some music, as I was told the very poisonous snakes had been sighted in the campsite, and that noise keeps them at bay. Personally, i have never found Vivaldi and Bach to be intimidating, but they sure did the job with ‘dem snakes!

Materials used:

oil paint

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