Turkey Vulture and his friend, Mauve Chair (who is really just the embodiment of David Attenborough)

I have been working on this turkey vulture so long she is almost real to me.  I've caught myself talking to her a few times! Too much paint and glue fumes and not enough tea breaks.  

Just like a collage, this piece came to me in pieces.  First, I saw a vulture in my neighborhood, which is crazy because I've never seen one.  I live in the suburbs and vultures just don't hang out here.  Then, a few days later, I saw one of the ugliest chairs I've ever seen sitting next to a dumpster. What little upholstery left on the chair was this horrid 90s mauve, and there was just something oddly special about it.  I remember telling Robert, who was walking with me, that we needed to stop and stare at the chair for a minute. That night the chair and vulture were part of a dream that I woke up and hurriedly wrote down.  Unfortunately, it was not poem material. But I wondered if I could capture what the dream was trying to tell me through collage, and I think I did!

 

The collage was originally going to be mostly paper and very little paint.  However, I just couldn't get the paper to recreate what I saw in my dream.  It was that two steps forward and one step backwards kind of work that involves a lot of poking and squishing paper.  It was one of those pieces that required a lot of brain power, but it was also thrilling to see something that only existed in a dream slowly come to life.  Especially since I couldn't draw it very well each time I tried to sketch it.  Drawing is hard!

After the piece was "finished" I painted over every single flower to make them stand out less, which took a lot of time and blending.  I also redid the vulture's beak and spent one fun day working on the chair's flowers. That was definitely my favorite day!  I kept the spirit of the 90s mauve but made a slightly different chair than the real one.  In the dream, the chair was alive and it was really wise.  Only recently was I able to recognize its voice as David Attenborough's voice, which makes a lot of sense. That's why dreams are great, right? 

Now it's time for the vulture to fly away and make room for the next project.