Paintings on feathers (9 works)

24 January 2013

5 843

Category: Art and hand-drawn graphics, 0+

Drawing pictures on bird feathers is an ancient art of the Maori people. Modern artists have mastered it to perfection.
Followers of New Zealand's indigenous art - artists who paint on bird feathers - are found in almost every country. The most famous of them, largely thanks to the Internet, are the British artist Ian Davey, who paints exclusively on swan feathers, and the American Julia Thompson, who uses peacock and turkey feathers in her work.

Julie Thompson
Julia Thompson began pursuing her challenging work in 1990. According to the artist herself, at first she turned to this activity only in order to find at least some use for the feathers that fell from the wings of her mother’s peacocks. “Having never done this before, but knowing about the bonding properties of acrylic paints, I decided that this was a completely feasible experiment,” says the artist. Starting with simple subjects, over time Julia moved on to depicting more complex drawings.

Julia was born and raised in Alaska. According to the artist, the influence of the majestic landscapes of her native land permeates most of her works. Julia Thompson's main subjects are paintings from the life of wild nature, but sometimes the artist depicts people on peacock feathers. It takes from 8 to 16 hours to paint one feather. Julia admits that she works slowly but precisely, trying to give each image as much life and emotion as possible.

The artist has no problems with subjects, but sometimes problems arise with “canvases”. She says that in America there are many laws protecting birds - even to the point that in some states it is forbidden to collect bird feathers. But Julia is not discouraged and places her main bets on peacocks and turkeys kept on her mother’s ranch in Southern California