Oh, birds. I love to see them, listen to them and draw them. Birds can be real or symbolic.
A bird can be conveyed in a single line, as in this French fabric from 1886.
Or in many lines, as in the Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur from 1815:
I have a flock of bird images pinned up in my studio for inspiration. Here are a few of them.
Owls by C.F.A. Voysey from England (1897):
Peacock from a 1920’s Japanese Matchbox: 
Gluckwunsche from the Wiener Werkstatte:
I put birds in my paintings, fabric and books. These birds were from my first fabric line, Folklorica.
I painted these Golden Birds for my sister.
And designed a line of fabric called Chickadee.
But after the terribly apt Portlandia episode (Put A Bird on It) I felt ashamed of this love. I must be able to think of something else to draw!
Of course I found other subject matter.
But birds flew back into paintings –
and paper cuts:
and onto quilts:
Birds are all around us, real and imaginary.
I think that if you feel like it, you should put a bird on it. Why not?
