It’s hard to get a chook to stand still while you paint it.
They have this annoying habit of scratching around in the dirt and endlessly pecking the ground. Chicken Tourette’s. If you can get one to be still long enough (or, duh, use a reference photo) chooks make great subject matter. They’re self-contained vivid balls of colour and they have personalities. Chook eyes can convey a wide variety of emotions; fear, aggression, possibly even love.
In my former life as an advertising creative I went through a slightly alarming phase of attempting to write a chicken into every ad. My greatest success was getting a character named Barry to marry a chicken in a TV commercial for orange juice.
The first time I attempted to paint a chook it was roaming around Dan and Katie’s front yard on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. We were up there christening our baby boy. A ceremony that involved sitting him on a surfboard in the shallows and pouring a little saltwater from a frisbee onto his head.
I spent an afternoon painting chooks in the front yard. As I wrestled with the pastels and yelled at the birds to stop flapping around so much, Marianne brought me cups of tea and checked on my progress. Marianne was Dan and Katie’s flatmate and dating a one-armed karate instructor at the time.
That was so many chickens ago.
At the beginning of this year, I was commissioned to paint another chicken. I like this chicken. I like it’s nineteen sixties folk art vibes and its feet. It’s for a friend who lost his wife last year and who he affectionately called ‘Chook’. I only hope my chook lives up to his.
