Description

I created this small scale oil painting of a pigeon from a photo that I took. I felt like a bit of a fool chasing pigeons around in public with my camera phone, trying to get a decent close up. When I snapped this one, I knew I’d caught the right one.

My aim was to celebrate the mundane beauty of a city pigeon, with those shiny pink and green plumes and those sharp orange eyes! I wanted to spend time studying and getting to know a pigeon as a subject and come to terms about cohabiting with a them and finally to put the painting in a gold frame to raise it from its ordinariness.

The problem with pigeons

The reason I painted a pigeon is because I wanted to come to terms with the little battle I was experiencing with them. I was lucky enough to have a gorgeous first floor roof terrace when I first arrived in Barcelona. However, pigeons would sit high on top of the neighbouring flats, with their bottoms hanging over the edge. Their droppings would fall all the way down (four stories) and land with a splat! I was forever hosing down the tiles, to avoid the terrace turning into the floor of a bird aviary.

My relationship with pigeons

I developed a relationship with a family of prolific pigeons – they had four sets of twin babies in one year. The babies would learn to fly around our terrace. The babies were vocally demanding and I’d watch as they constantly hounded their parents. They all drank from the trays of my plants and would wait for me to water. I love birds but these were so messy! I bought a fake owl with a swivel head but it just seemed to keep them company instead of scaring them away.