Back in October 2006 I was at an open studios in a nearby town and one of the artists had done a series of chicken paintings which were very whimsical and colorful. I was very smitten with one particular piece: that of a mama hen with a series of baby chicks stacked on her back to the top of the canvas, but it had already been sold by the time I got there. After talking with the artist, who had painted these pieces intending to donate all the money made from them to Heifer International, it turned out that that painting had been sold to a neighbor of his. He said she loved them all and didn't seem especially attached to that particular one, so he gave me her phone number to see if perhaps she'd agree to take another canvas so I could buy that one. (I spoke with her some time later and she felt the way I did, that this was far and away the best of those works and wouldn't even consider swapping. I didn't blame her one bit, but it was worth the try!) I did end up talking to the artist for a bit about his birds, his art, my own chickens and photos and paintings I have taken and done of them over the years in between more "serious work" and then I left, never giving him another thought.Flash forward to December 2007 when out of the blue I received a phone call from a man whose name I didn't recognize and had absolutely no idea who he was until he reminded me of that chicken painting he had done of the hen and chicks that I was so fond of. Ahhh! Now I remembered. Turned out that a gallery in a local town was having a large group show of just chicken paintings. A show that turned out, surprisingly, to be one blockbuster of a show, the opening so packed with people that they were lined up down the street to get in. So many people in fact that the owner of the gallery who had flown in from Spain that evening and had arrived late to the opening was not allowed in to his own gallery because it was too full to admit even one more person and was instead forced to wait outside with the crowds until the evening came to a close. Who would have thought that chicken art could be so compelling?
The piece above (Untitled, acrylic on wood, 2007) is a composite of two of my hens, Zelda Pearl and Trixie Bee.
