Intersections of Land and Sea
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Today I’m going to take you through the process of making the first painting in my Birds in the Landscape series, titled Intersections of Land and Sea. With a special announcement at the end!
If you haven’t read the introduction to the painting series that I wrote last month, I recommend reading it first, here.
Beginnings
I could make up a story about how this painting evolved from a deep idea about birds, landscape, and place, but the truth is that the idea slowly evolved out of the painting itself. As it formed, it began to tell a story about the intersection of habitats that these birds call home.
Sometimes when I have an idea for a painting, it comes directly from a scene I’ve capture from real life— something I’ve sketched in the field or taken a photo of. In the case of Intersections, I started with more of a vision about what I wanted the composition of the piece to look like. I also knew I wanted it to be of seabirds, and I was feeling called to cormorants, specifically the Brandt’s cormorant and their beautiful iridescent colors and bright blue eyes. And I wanted it to be tied locally to place.
Exploration & Research
As I was researching Brandt’s cormorants, I was struck by how the colors of these birds and the landscape of Point Lobos-- one of their nesting locations here, near Carmel-by-the-Sea-- seemed to fit together.
Brandt’s cormorants (Urile penicillatus) live only along the Eastern Pacific Coast, from southern Alaska to the Gulf of California. They inhabit three worlds: the air, the land, and the sea. At Point Lobos they nest in large colonies on gently sloping offshore rocks where they can be safe from land predators.
In photos taken from afar, the birds morph into strange indecipherable shapes in the landscape, while up close they dominate the rocks and become features in their own right. Male and female Brandt’s cormorants are not sexually dimorphic in their coloring, meaning they have the same coloring.
A look at their range map will show how limited an area these cormorants inhabit, a narrow band along the coastline. From Spring to late Summer each year, strong offshore winds create up-wells of cold, nutrient dense water full of phytoplankton which attract masses of fish, marine mammals, and seabirds like the Brandt’s cormorant. Food ties them here.
Brandt’s cormorants who are not migrating tend to stay close to the shoreline, in the in-between zone called the littoral zone, or nearshore area. They form large feeding flocks and, when taking to the air, will fly in formation together.
I would also learn through researching these birds, that their species name penicillatus means “shaped like a painter’s brush” in latin, after their brush-like white accent feathers during breeding season. How fitting!
I started the painting in late summer, so I wasn’t able to get my own reference photos of the birds in their spring colors. I referenced different photos of the cormorants online as well as the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America instead of painting from one specific photograph.
Putting Paint to Canvas
Initially I wanted this painting to be mostly bird shapes that were overlapping and going off the canvas. I first painted four birds, as you can see in the photo below, but I decided the one wing didn’t fit well with the scale of the other birds, so it ended up being painted over and became rocks and water.
I was having a bad flare of elbow and hand pain, so I wasn't able to do a lot of sketching at the time. I started by sketching loosely on the canvas itself with my long-handled paintbrush. I don't have any photos of the very early stages of this painting, but it looked like a very rough shapes version of the left photo above. But it was bright purple and green and black. Starting with odd colors helps me not to take myself too seriously.
I worked slowly, pausing at stages for weeks at a time. I’d go into my garage studio and stare at the painting, thinking about what I wanted to do with it next.
This was sometimes challenging, as the oil paint would actually dry out too much and it became difficult if I hadn’t finished a section. This resulted in the colors slowly changing over time as I kept adding layers. But it also allowed me a lot of time and space to get to know the piece, and to really think about what I wanted to do with it. I don’t think it would have been the same painting had I been able to push through it. Pausing gave me perspective that helped shape the finished painting.
The colors in this painting come directly from the landscape. Figuratively and literally, since I paint with natural oil paints that use earth and mineral pigments mixed with refined walnut oil. The colors I mixed reflect the vibrancy of the place: the shockingly bright blue water, the twin tones of the rocks both pale and dark, and the greens, yellows, and reds of the local plant life. (Note: the pigments were not taken directly from Point Lobos, which is a protected State Natural Reserve. My paints are from the company Natural Earth Paints)
The colors of the birds themselves are a reflection of the landscape: the bright teal eyes and throat patches bordered in sand, the overlays of shimmering blue and teal among the deep black, and the red highlights in the wings as light shines through them.
The End Result
I like how this painting evolved out of its own uncertain beginnings and became a depiction of the intersection where these birds live their lives. A place where land meets sea; where a bird can make its temporary home on the rocky earth, raise a family, be nourished, and take to the sky whenever they have the need.
These birds defy boundaries in their very existence, they show us that the categories we try to neatly define the world by don’t apply in nature. To live in that in-between space is to live in things as they are: interconnected and overlapping, unable to be perfectly categorized. Are there really boundaries in nature? Where does the land end and the sea begin? The air?
From this painting, I felt the spark to keep exploring this idea of coastal birds relating to their habitat and landscape, both ecologically and visually, and my own experiences relating to them as an observer. With birds as my teacher, I’m learning new ways to relate to my own surroundings, to the landscape I call home, and to the Earth as a whole.
Did you know?
The American Ornithological Society announced in 2023 that it will change the English names of birds in North America that are named after people, to turn the focus from people of the past who did harm, to the beauty of the birds as they are. I wonder what the Brandt’s cormorants name will be? I would nominate the Painted Cormorant.
For the birds - Prints now available!
While the original painting is not yet for sale (more on that hopefully soon), you can now buy prints of Intersections of Land and Sea from my online shop, with 10% of the profits from these prints going to Monterey Audubon Society. As a local chapter and independent nonprofit, they are dependent on the support of chapter members and local funding to run bird surveys and provide free educational programs and birdwatching events for the public.
References
Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America
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