I never know where a painting idea will come from.  Any artist will tell you that they get inspiration from life experiences.  I guess that I’m no exception.   It can take years for an idea to come to fruition as it percolates in the back of my mind.   Then finally, I will decide that the time has come to pull the idea out from my imagination and recreate it with paint.

Several years ago my husband and I were taking a leisurely walk around a small lake in a nearby park.  I’ve always admired an abstract sculpture that sits beside the lake.  The artist created this sculpture by welding scrap metal pieces together to form a kind of serpent-like creature.  Over the years rust has given the sculpture a wonderful patina.    We strolled past the serpent on that day as we have many times.   Suddenly out of nowhere a Belted Kingfisher flew up and perched right up on the top of the serpent’s head, using it as a vantage point over the water.   I didn’t have my camera with me that day, but that image has stayed etched in my mind ever since.

I decided to redesign the serpent to be as it would if I had sculpted it myself, using the idea of old rusty metal.   I wanted it to be more dragon-like to give traction to my idea.  It was fun to come up with a three dimensional sculpture idea based loosely on one that I had already seen.  The result is my painting “The King’s Dragon”.

“The King’s Dragon”

Male Belted Kingfisher, (detail)