This Little Bird
A few weeks ago Matthew and I had a short holiday in the south-west of our state. How it came about was a kind of miracle. Matthew had been called up for jury service – much to his horror. Because an average court case is a week Matthew cancelled all his engagements for five days and turned up to do his civic duty hoping like mad not to be selected for a long drawn-out case. By mid-morning Matt’s time in court was over. He had not been selected and was fully discharged.
“Let’s go away”, he said to me in a Fremantle café. We rushed home. I pounced on the internet and found a Yallingup vacancy. Two hours later we were on the road heading for our first holiday in 20 months.
I had been feeling a bit lost since my art exhibition in April this year. Where was my sense of wonderment? I had put it somewhere and now couldn’t find it. Over the months layers of sadness had built up with all the miserable world news. I looked under those layers and there it was, revealed – in the form of small BIRDS – passerines – perching birds.
Since being back in Perth I have spent hours and hours outdoors watching and photographing birds. My appreciation for life has returned.
Do you remember the 1965 song “This Little Bird” sung by Marianne Faithfull? It has been going round and round in my head. Our family had the 45″ rpm single which I constantly played as a six year old.
“There’s a little bird that somebody sends/ Down to the earth to live on the wind…”
I feel a series of passerine portraits coming on – starting with this south-western Silvereye from Berry Farm in Margaret River. This little bird – that somebody sends – to heal my heart.
Julie Podstolski - Abstract Realism 